Briar glared at the Vipers. “What kind of gang are you?” he demanded. Ayasha sighed and went to sit with the others. Briar paid her no attention as he went on, “You come in daylight and sit on your heels out here like so many tame dogs. How stupid can you be? It’s folk like her that keep folk like us poor. She —”

“Folk like us?” repeated the short, black-skinned youth Briar had seen before. “What do you know of being poor? Who are you to talk to us of gangs?”

“I spent ten years in Deadman’s District in Hajra,” Briar said tightly. “Six of them in a gang, the Lightnings. I fought rats for bread and stole to keep the Thief-Lord from whipping the skin off my back. Once I had a chance to get out, I took it. All I have, I earned. I didn’t get it waiting for the scraps from a takameri’s table! She’s the enemy, her and all the nobles like her —”

“She is Shaihun’s creation,” interrupted one of them as he stood. He was tall, lean, and familiar, the youth who had told Briar that something that talked and walked like a dog was probably a dog. Fading bruises circled his eyes. “No eknub can understand submission to Shaihun.”

“Besides, she’s going to make us the top gang in the city,” added the short, black Viper. “Gate Lords are already milling like scared sheep. They don’t know who’s next since their tesku went missing.”

“If you had any weight as a gang, you wouldn’t need anyone but your mates,” Briar informed them bitterly. “Doesn’t it shame you, taking orders from the likes of her?”

He’d allowed himself to be distracted from the tall Viper, who had drifted closer. Now he leaped on Briar, seized him by the shirt, threw him to the ground and landed on top of him, hands around Briar’s throat. At least Briar’s hands had not been napping, unlike his brain. He dug the points of his unsheathed wrist knives into the Viper’s sides. The taller boy ignored them, despite the tiny rounds of blood that flowered on his shirt.

“She has graced us with her attention,” he snarled at Briar. “Don’t talk about something you don’t understand.” He relaxed his grip on Briar’s neck.

“What I understand is that you’re a sworn member of the daftie guild,” retorted Briar. Mentally he kicked himself for letting this fellow get so close. “Don’t you see you’re in a tight place, tighter maybe than you can escape?”

“Ikrum, no.” Ayasha wrapped her hands around the thin Viper’s arm. “The pahan’s all right. He just don’t understand.” She tugged Ikrum’s arm. “He’s a friend in a pinch, though. Yoru, help me,” she told the short black youth.

“He doesn’t respect her,” Ikrum protested.

“He don’t have to. He isn’t sworn to her.” Yoru took Ikrum’s other arm. Carefully he and Ayasha pried their tesku’s hands off Briar’s neck. To Briar, Yoru said, “Sheath your knives. He didn’t even bruise you.”

“Get him off me first,” snapped Briar. “Before I teach him a lesson none of you will forget.” Yoru and Ayasha pulled Ikrum to his feet.

Briar wiped the bloody points of his knives in the dust as he sat up, then resheathed them. He looked up at Ikrum, still in the grip of his two followers.

“If you want my opinion, you’ll get away from her.” He nodded toward the gate. “She’s no goddess, just a takameri who’s mad with power. She’ll eat you all if she gets the chance.” Briskly he removed his over robe and shook the dust from its folds.

“He’s a good tesku,” snapped another Viper, a golden-skinned boy. “We’ve done better with him than any other.”

“If he’s done you so much good,” Briar replied, slapping the dirt from the seat of his breeches, “why are you out here in the sun like a pack of hounds?”

“I’m all right,” Ikrum snapped, jerking himself away from his keepers. He strode over to Briar, pressing his hands against the small wounds in his sides. Holding up his blood-marked fingers, he licked them clean. “You stuck me,” he said casually, and gave a toothy smile. “You won’t do that twice.”

Briar stood on tiptoe to glare into his eyes. “You won’t get another chance at me, play-toy boy,” he said quietly. “Now, rethink your life, before she takes it from you and leaves you on a garbage heap.” He thrust a foot into one stirrup and mounted his horse. “Because you aren’t one of hers, no matter what she says, and unless you’re one of hers, you’re just a thing to be used.” Briar surveyed the other Vipers. “And you’re a bunch of sheep if you let him do it.” He urged his horse into a walk.

An image of his past had come into his mind at the mention of garbage heaps. He’d been five or six, perhaps, when he stole a fine scarf. Two older boys had taken it, leaving Briar to grub in the garbage behind an inn, hoping to find a morsel of food. The Thief-Lord had met him there. He’d offered food, and a gang, and mates who wouldn’t beat him up and take his prizes. By the time Briar learned that the two older boys belonged to another of the Thief-Lord’s gangs and that they often set things up so street kids would be grateful to the Thief-Lord, he was being trained as an all-around thief.

So what makes me different from the Vipers? he wondered gloomily, studying one of his palms. The inked green vines had not managed to conquer his right hand entirely. The scarred welt that crossed his palm would not take the dyes, forcing the vines to twine around the three deep pockmarks where thorns had marked him for life.