Chapter Text
Sasha is eight and no one knows it but her.
There’s nothing special about being eight, she finds out. It doesn’t feel much different than being seven or six or five or four, even if she doesn’t remember much about being four.
When she wakes up, she feels just the same as she did the night before. Her arms and legs are achy—from growing, she’s told, but kids in Other London only grow to be so big and Brock is just a head taller than she is anyway.
She checks her limbs all the same—they look no different. The bruise on her knee is healing well. It doesn’t hurt that much anymore, not even when she pokes it with her finger, but Brock still looks sad when he sees it. It wasn’t his fault the door wouldn’t open, she’d told him. They couldn’t have known how the trap worked just from the outside of the building.
He didn’t seem to see it that way.
Sasha is eight today.
She pulls on her socks and her shoes and the jacket that’s a touch too big for her. She makes sure her daggers are in the right places and that they’re just as sharp as she likes them—Brock told her he’d give the whetstone back to her today, and she knows he’ll do it.
Nobody knows she’s eight. She’d meant to tell Brock yesterday, but—well. It had slipped her mind. He knows her birthday is soon. He just doesn’t know it’s today.
And no one in Other London cares much for birthdays, really. Barrett says they’re a waste of time and money.
“They happen every year,” he’d said. “They’re not so special.”
Maybe they aren’t. But Sasha still thinks they’re nice to remember.
She looks at her hands.
Her hands are eight years old.
And so are her arms and her legs and her fingers and toes and she’s eight.
It’s nothing special, of course.
But she’s still eight, and that means something.
It means something.
“There you are, Sasha,” Barrett says as the door shuts behind her with a click. He’s sitting at his desk, a pen poised in his hands and a tilt to his head. Eyes down, she shuffles to the center of the room. The carpet beneath her feet is plush and the colors remind her of the market square. “Happy birthday.”
There is a beat.
Sasha frowns. She doesn’t dare look up. “You… knew?”
“Oh, of course,” Barrett says, mellifluous. “I’d be a poor uncle if I didn’t.”
“I thought you—um. I didn’t think you’d remember.”
“I wouldn’t forget your birthday.”
You don’t remember Brock’s birthday, Sasha thinks, but does not say. Because she knows his birthday like the back of her hand—the tenth of December, when it gets really cold and being in her room is miserable. In the evening sometime, he’d said.
“How do you know that?” she’d asked, nose wrinkling. “When you’re born you’re—you’re all tiny n’ stuff. You can’t remember anything when you’re so small.”
“I don’t know,” he’d said. “I just—dunno. Feels right.”
Sasha doesn’t know what time she was born. She just knows she was born today, and that she’s eight, and that maybe it isn’t special but she’s still eight.
She messes with the cuff of her shirt. “Well,” she says awkwardly. “I’m—”
Barrett sighs. “Eyes front, Sasha. We’ve been over this.”
Slowly, she lifts her head.
Barrett’s eyes are agate grey, and they rove over Sasha, calculating. She is more specimen than human as he stares at her.
She holds his gaze. A thousand spiders crawl up her arms.
There is a beat.
Barrett pivots on his heel—not to leave, but to meander over to his desk—and Sasha’s shoulders all but sag with relief.
“How old are you turning, again?”
He asks the question like he doesn’t care. All things considered, he probably doesn’t. But he’s trying to act like he does, and Sasha can’t tell which is worse.
Behind her back, her hands wring. “Eight,” she says quietly.
“Eight,” Barrett echoes. He is sifting through one of the drawers, only keeping half his attention on her. She does her best not to fidget. “Is that so?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t remember when I turned eight. It was a long time ago, you see. Do you think you will remember this day in a year?”
Sasha opens her mouth, then closes it. Her nails bite her palm. “No.”
It’s a lie, and a poor one at that, but Barrett must be feeling charitable today, for he only gives her a smile made up of pearly white teeth and says, “Perhaps you are learning.”
To lie, or to please?
She is silent.
The drawer clicks shut.
“Here.”
He throws something at her, and it’s so sudden and unexpected that Sasha can’t even try to catch it. The thing—whatever it is—hits her on the shoulder and falls to her feet. Barrett tuts as she scrambles to pick it up, heart pounding.
“Oh, really, Sasha?” he says, and he sounds almost disappointed. She presses her lips together as she takes the object in her hand. It’s a package, of sorts. It fits right in her palm. Her fingers close over it. “And here I thought your reflexes had improved. You don’t need another lesson with Ashen, do you?”
Ashen. His name is ugly enough on its own but with Barrett’s tongue and the images it conjures, it’s even worse. The split lip he’d given her the last time they’d met had taken two weeks to heal. Teeth gritted, Sasha says, “No. No, sorry. I just wasn’t—”
“Mm, yes, I’m sure.” Barrett tilts his head. “But you’ll figure it out, won’t you?”
The package is wrapped with newspaper, a parody of the gifts she hears about from above. She can’t read any of the headlines, but there’s a picture of what can only be Upper London from its black and white opulence. Hastily, she nods. “Yes. Sorry.”
He grins at her again. It looks no better. “Go on, Sasha. Happy birthday.”
She doesn’t need to be told twice. The moment the words have left his mouth, she ducks her head and walks as fast as her legs will take her out of the room, the package clutched to her chest like it’s something precious.
Knowing Barrett, it’s surely nothing of the sort, but it’s nice to pretend that it could be.
Sasha has the whole layout of his headquarters mapped out in her mind, and she knows the shadows and places she won’t be seen as well as she knows how to stab, so she is out of the building in less than a minute.
Leaving Barrett’s headquarters does not mean she is safe, of course. Ashen and his group are lurking around, surely, and they are never merciful. But safe is a relative term when it comes to Other London, and as long as she remains within Barrett’s territory, she should be fine.
Not safe.
You can’t be safe.
But fine.
She will be fine.
Sasha traipses down the streets.
Brock said she would meet him after this, and she keeps her eyes peeled for him all the while. He’s not nearly as good at hiding as she is but he’s definitely gotten better at reducing his presence and more often than not she’s found her gaze wandering right over him, even though he was easily the most noticeable thing in the alley.
This might be why she rams into someone while rounding a corner.
The impact is enough to send them both to the floor, but Sasha is back on her feet the moment she’s down and the person who had fallen is still on their back.
Sasha is halfway through drawing a dagger when she realizes that the person on the ground is just a kid. A clumsy one, maybe, but it’s a girl. She’s way younger than she is, with eyes that remind Sasha very much of her own—hard like coal but pliable all the same.
Sasha stares at the girl, eyes wide, and the girl stares back.
That is, until someone else comes barreling around the corner, apron askew and chest heaving with breath.
“Thief!” they are shouting. “Thief!”
It is through instinct, not want, that Sasha grabs the girl’s arm and shoves her behind a pile of boxes beside the alley.
“Stay there,” Sasha tells her, and the girl just nods before sinking out of sight.
The person’s—a baker from the nicer market, by the looks of their dress—gaze latches on Sasha like a moth to a flame. “Have you seen a thief?” they ask. “About—this high. Little girl. Pigtails, I think?”
“No,” Sasha says, studiously avoiding looking at where the girl is hiding. “I haven’t.” She jerks a thumb out to the direction opposite the boxes. “Might wanna go that way. Think I saw someone. They were runnin’ real fast.”
“The brat stole a loaf,” the baker goes on, furious. “Right in front of me!”
Sasha gives a shrug. “Happens.”
“My best one. The crust was just right. Golden brown, you know?”
“I’d say they’re probably halfway across Other London with it now.” And Sasha watches with a quiet sort of glee as the baker’s face seems to shift from ire to realization. “I said they were going fast. If I were you I’d go and catch ‘em right about now.”
“Yeah,” they say. “Yeah, yeah—hey, you’re a Racket, arentcha?”
The girl lets out a small sound.
The baker’s ears prick at the noise. Sasha rushes in front of them, hands on her hips. “Why d’you wanna know?” she says, and she tries to act in that tough sort of way she’s seen—where you’re stuck in a fight you know you’ll lose but you still want to try. She doesn’t know if it works, but the baker’s eyes are on her.
“No, no, I was just wondering. It’s just—you’ve got his eyes.”
Sasha’s lips thin into a line. “Who’s?” she asks, but she already knows the answer.
“Barrett’s. Oh, which way did you say that girl went?”
Stiffly, Sasha points. The baker nods again, gives something of a smile—which Sasha does not return—and takes their leave. She watches them until they leave the alley before daring to check if the girl is still there. She is, staring up at Sasha with wide eyes. The piece of bread she’d stolen is golden brown, as the baker said.
Sasha offers her a hand. The girl takes it, gingerly.
“Shouldn’t be coming after you anymore,” Sasha tells her. “Sent ‘em in an entirely different direction. And I don’t think they heard you, either, so that’s good.”
The girl gives a little nod. She opens her mouth, as if to say something, before closing it at the last second. Then, she whispers, “You’re with the Rackets?”
Sasha tries for an awkward smile, though the name makes a pit open in her stomach. “Kinda,” she says. “Don’t wanna be, but—I dunno. Family stuff.”
The girl is silent. Then, “A Racket killed my mum.”
There is a beat.
“Oh,” Sasha says quietly. “I’m sorry.”
“Didn’t pay something to ‘em,” the girl continues. She is half Sasha’s size but somehow manages to look even smaller, shrinking in on herself. Her eyes are wet. “The big man. He kept telling her to, a-and she was tryna get the money, honest, but—” She starts to cry. “She—she was trying. She almost did. But then he came to our house, a-and he…”
She hiccups, leaving the sentence unfinished, but it doesn’t take much to connect the pieces. A debt unpaid. A girl orphaned. A carpet bloodied.
It’s a story you hear often.
“You—you won’t…”
“I’ve never killed anyone,” Sasha says firmly. “I won’t—I’m not like him.” And the girl looks up at her, the picture of misery. Sasha does not try to smile any more, but she puts a tentative hand on the girl’s shoulder. Beneath her fingers, the girl shakes. “I hate his guts just as much as you do.”
Roughly, the girl rubs at her eyes. “B-but he’s your uncle, right?”
“Doesn’t mean I have to like him. He treats me just the same as he treats everyone else. Badly.”
“Oh.”
Sasha takes her hand away from the girl’s shoulder. “I’m real sorry about your mum.”
“My dad’s still here,” she says. “He takes care of me. The bread is for him.”
“‘S good that you’re taking care of him, too. Oh, and next time, I’d steal it when people aren’t looking,” Sasha adds, nodding to the bread. “Or when they’ve got another customer and are all occupied n’ stuff. Y’know?”
The girl gives a nod, and then a tentative sort of smile, before scampering off into the dark of Other London.
Sasha turns and does the same.
You learn where to walk, as you get older. Where to cross, where to stop. Where to wait, and where to look.
There is a kid sitting on the roof of one of the old bars; it might’ve once been something like the Bloody Bulldog but it’s long since run out of business. And it’s a familiar kid, one who’s tossing a knife like they were born doing it and one that Sasha shares the shape of her face with.
“So you were waiting for me after all,” Sasha says, and the kid’s head whips around, face splitting with a grin.
Brock’s smile isn’t like Barrett’s, and it never has been. His left canine is missing and he looks silly, not scary, as he waves her down from the roof.
“Sasha!” he shouts. “Sasha!”
“Stop yelling,” she calls back, not unkindly. She jumps atop the awning of the abandoned market stall and clambers up the wall. “D’you want the entire world to hear you?”
Brock extends a hand when she reaches the edge, and she accepts it, letting him pull her up. First to her feet, and then into a hug. “Not really,” he says, when the embrace is broken. “I just didn’t think you’d be here.”
“Why not?”
“Dunno. Thought you’d be doing—a job, or something? Or some kinda special thing. ‘S your birthday and all.”
Sasha jabs him in the side. “Birthday girls don’t ever get special stuff. And we don’t even do jobs alone anymore,” she reminds him. “We work better together, apparently. Like a well-oiled machine.”
Barrett had called them that once. It was after one of their better assignments—a larger haul, more leads to dismantling a rival. The bars of gold on his desk gleamed.
“The two of you are a well-oiled machine,” he’d said. “I wonder how that happened.”
Sasha and Brock had exchanged a glance. How had it happened?
They were born underground.
That’s how it happened.
And Barrett had not been happy with them—not quite—but there was a certain glint to his eye, and they left his office without bruises.
Brock gives a little laugh at that. “Apparently.” He flops over on his back, arms splayed out. His head rolls over to look at Sasha. “I don’t mind it. ‘S worse by yourself.”
She sits down beside him. The tin of the roof beneath her is cool. “Yeah, it is.” She hesitates. Then, “Wanna see what Barrett gave me?”
Brock’s face screws up. “It’s not bad, is it?”
“I…” Her brows knit together. “I don’t really know.”
“What d’you mean? Is it like—a gift?”
Wordlessly, Sasha holds out the package. Pushing himself upright, Brock takes it from her, handling it as though it might explode at any moment. He frowns.
“I guess it’s a gift,” she says, watching as Brock examines it. She rests her chin in her hands. “What do you think it is?”
“A book?” He shakes it. “It might be a book. It’s book-shaped. Books are squares.”
“Rectangles, you mean. And I can’t read, so what’s the point in a book?”
“Well, I can’t really read, either. But I know my name. And yours. And maybe the word eel. Numbers, too, but those are easy.”
Sasha snorts. “Nobody’s writing any books about us,” she tells him. “Wouldn’t matter even if you did know.”
“You don’t know that.” Brock tosses the package in the air and catches it, looking thoughtful. “I betcha there’s some author down here too. And you know what? I think it’s a book.”
“But why would Barrett give me a book?” Sasha folds her arms. “Could’ve given me a dagger. Would’ve been more useful. I lost that one last week. Remember? It was the one with—the jagged sorta end.”
“It could be a dagger, too,” Brock says.
“‘S not dagger shaped,” she points out. “It couldn’t be one.”
He shrugs. “Might be in a box.”
She gazes very hard at the package. “It’s a really little box, then.”
“We’ll open it together,” Brock says decisively. “That way if we die—”
“We won’t die,” Sasha cuts in, but even she can’t be sure. Not with Barrett.
“—we won’t be left alone, ‘cause we didn’t open it with each other.” He pulls a dagger from his pocket and gives a smile. “Right?”
She looks at his hands, then her own.
Only one pair is trembling.
“Right,” she says. Steeling herself, she draws a dagger of her own. “Okay. Are we gonna—cut the paper?”
“Yeah, we can cut the paper. Just down the sides, probably. On three?”
Sasha nods, and they both hoist their blades into the air.
“One.”
The headlines taunt her.
“Two.”
Brock is still smiling.
“Three!”
Sasha imagines Barrett’s face—the stubble on his chin, his golden molars—and stabs.
Without resistance, her dagger sinks deep into the package. Brock’s has cut a line down the side, and he is carefully peeling the paper away. Sasha stares, not daring to breathe. From where she sits, she can’t quite see what’s inside, but there is no mistaking the expression on Brock’s face. At first, it is something cautious, wary, but it soon morphs into what can only be described as pleasant confusion.
“Oh,” Brock says after a moment. “Huh.”
“What?” Sasha asks, clambering over to his side. “What is it?”
“Well,” he says, laughing a little, “it’s not a book. Or a dagger. Or a box with a dagger inside it.”
At last, she looks at the contents of the package.
And it is certainly not a book. Nor is it a dagger, or a box with a dagger within. Granted, there is a dagger inside, given that Sasha hadn’t exactly retrieved her blade from the thing, but the package is like nothing she’s ever seen.
It’s wrapped loosely with even more newspaper, but Brock has torn some of it away, and she can make out a deep brown… rectangle, probably. It’s divided into little squares. She’d almost mistake it for a slab of wood but wood gives you splinters and this object is smooth. Sasha very nearly reaches out to touch it, before pulling her hand away at the last moment.
She frowns. “What is it?”
“Chocolate,” Brock breathes. “It’s—like a sweet. That one posh vendor in the square sells it sometimes.”
She peers at the package again. She’s never heard of such a thing. “Have you ever had it?”
“Only once, but it was well good. Like if you ate a cloud or something.”
Sasha laughs a little. “A cloud?” she says. “I don’t even know what a cloud looks like.”
“I mean, yeah, I don’t either, but you know those picture books? With the pictures of the sky and stuff? You can’t tell me the clouds don’t look tasty.”
“What are clouds even made out of?”
He shrugs. “Dunno. Probably just air.”
“Air’s not really tasty,” she says.
“Maybe not,” he concedes. “I still think it’d be nice to eat a cloud.”
She stares at the candy bar some more, before crossing her arms and lifting her chin. “Don’t know if it’s safe, though,” she says. “We shouldn’t eat it.”
Brock seems to hesitate. “Well—”
“Might be poisoned. You know Barrett. He likes poison.”
Brock holds the chocolate up to the light, and, after a moment of thought, pulls Sasha’s dagger from it and looks at it a little more closely. “It doesn’t look poisoned.”
“Yeah, ‘cause that’s the way poison works,” Sasha says emphatically, arms still folded across her chest, watching Brock warily as he examines the sweet further. “You’re not supposed to know it’s poisoned until you’re—well, y’know. Dead.”
Brock hums, considering. “Only one way to find out.”
And, without preamble, he breaks off a square and puts it in his mouth.
Sasha yells.
He’s still chewing the chocolate when she all but tackles him and starts swatting at his back.
“Don’t eat it!” she shouts. Frenetically, she grabs him by the shoulders and starts to shake him. “You’re gonna—you can’t—!”
But Brock only gives her a smile and wipes a smear of chocolate from beside his mouth. “I’m fine,” he says. “And you wanna know something? It tasted really, really good.”
That does little to reassure her. “It—it could still be poisoned!”
“I don’t think it is. Didn’t taste like poison, anyway.”
“You haven’t ever been poisoned,” Sasha says, and she’s still sort of shaking him, fingers digging into his arms in a way that should hurt but Brock doesn’t flinch from her touch. “Y-you wouldn’t know how it tastes. What if you are, and you—”
“Hey, hey, Sasha, ‘s fine. I’m fine.” And his hands close around hers and gently lead them away from his shoulders. He just holds her hands for a little bit, and meets her eyes with a tentative smile. “See? I’m okay.”
And he looks okay—he’s not shaky or feverish or anything like that—but Sasha has seen poisons act in different ways, ways you don’t notice until it’s too late and your throat gets choked and it is all you can do not to cough your lungs out onto the ground.
She blinks, and her vision blurs with tears. “B-but—you don’t know—”
“I don’t think it’s poisoned, Sasha,” Brock tells her. He squeezes her hands. “I know—I know it could be, but y’know how I said I tasted chocolate before, right? This one tastes the exact same as the one I had before. Exactly. I bet it’s from the same place and everything.”
She sniffles. “You do?”
“Yeah. I think it’s dark chocolate—I wanna say there’s another kind that’s more sweet but I think this is sweet enough.” He hesitates, then, and breaks off a square of the chocolate and holds it out to her. Sasha stares at it. “And—and you don’t have to eat any of it,” he adds quickly, “but I really think it’s okay to eat. Won’t make you drop dead. You might get sick if you eat too much but I think that’s just the way sweets work.”
She stares at the piece of chocolate some more.
Then, slowly, she takes it from him and puts it in her mouth. She chews, swallows.
“Oh,” she says quietly, eyes widening. “It kinda is like if you ate a cloud.”
Brock grins. “See? And like, I don’t know what a cloud tastes like, but it's good, right?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s real good.”
And the day passes like that—Sasha is eight, Brock is happy, and the chocolate bar isn’t poisoned.
Perhaps a day like this isn’t so special but she is a year older than she once was and that means something.
It means something.
“Brock,” Sasha says suddenly, sitting up. “How’d you know today was my birthday?”
He wipes at his chocolate-smeared mouth. “Huh?”
“You said happy birthday to me earlier, but I didn’t say today was my birthday. So how’d you—know?”
“‘Cause I just know when your birthday is.”
She stares at him, half in wonder and half in curiosity. “How d’you just—remember stuff like that?”
Brock shrugs, and offers her another piece of chocolate. She takes it. “‘S just one of those friend things,” he says. At her frown, he goes on, “Like, I bet you know when my birthday is. Right?”
“Yeah,” Sasha says, “I do. But—”
“That’s just what friends do. They remember stuff about each other. Y’know?”
And it doesn’t make sense—not really—but Brock says it so firmly and so fully that she can’t help but nod along.
“Yeah,” she says quietly. “Yeah, I think I know.” Suddenly, she lunges for him, trying to wrangle the candy bar away from where he’d been trying to slip it into his jacket. “Hey, quit hogging all the chocolate!”
“Not my fault it’s so good,” he says, grinning.
“It was my birthday gift!”
“And you thought it was all—poisoned. Now you want it?”
“Yeah, ‘cause neither of us are dead or gone or whatever. It’s good. Give it back!”
Cheekily, Brock sticks her tongue at her. “Make me!”
(They split it evenly, in the end. Things like these work better in halves, and they taste better, too.
“We might have to go by that one posh vendor sometime,” Sasha says when all that remains of the chocolate bar are the smears on their faces and fingers. “The one that sells chocolate.”
Brock checks the pockets in his pants and then the pockets in his jacket. He frowns. “I don’t have any money.”
An impish sort of grin falls upon her face, and she says, “Well, I don’t either, but it’s good that we’re thieves, right?”
“Right.”)