Smoke Sky by Amy Braun

Author:Amy Braun [Braun, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: dark sky, smoke sky, prequel, novella, steampunk, fantasy, horror
Publisher: Amy Braun
Published: 2016-12-06T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

The trudge back to the Dauntless was free of Hellions, but now we were on the lookout for thieves. We were lucky that none of them accosted us as we carried our collected scrap metal, bolts, and malformed boxes with wires dangling from them like tentacles. Our successful anti-mugging stretch was largely because I told Sawyer where to maneuver. He seemed to know the streets as well as I did, but I was a professional thief when I wasn’t spying on my new friends. Sawyer liked the streets because of the hiding spots they could provide, but right now we needed speed.

So I suggested the roofs, and was amazed again when he listened to me.

As we bounded from one rooftop to the other, shifting the bundles and flattened metal so we could cross, I cast glances into the streets. Since no other raiding skiffs seemed to have come down in the past couple hours and the sky lightened to a morbid slate grey––the sign of dawn in Westraven––the streets were alive with survivors.

Fast-handed exchanges and sharp-tongued deals took place in isolated alleys. Boarded windows were pried open, slim men and women slipping back and forth with their belongings. Rubble was tossed aside as hunters dug for hidden treasure––theirs, or someone else’s.

It was like this all over Westraven when the heavy rains hit. Stragglers and survivors of all kinds––Junkers, marauders, indentured slaves, colonists, independents––risked the freezing rains to hunt for whatever supplies they could find. Scavenging Days took place all the time, but citywide hunts like this only happened in the rainy season when the Hellions were less likely to attack. It still happened, though not as often.

That didn’t make the streets safe.

Everyone had something that somebody else wanted. Street fights, muggings, looting, and murder were more common in these few months than any other time of the year. Sometimes they were means of getting a resource or supply. I lost track of how many times I’d seen someone stabbed over a bag of rice. Other times, the reason was a lot simpler, and so much worse.

Release.

Being trapped under the Hellions oppressive and literal claw made us weak. Vulnerable. Insane. The only way we could regain a trace of the power we used was to strip it from someone else. Someone who may deserve it, someone who didn’t. To killers, the victim didn’t matter as much as the need for control did.

Most of the time, it was marauders who used this season to kill. Eight years ago, they had power, fear, and respect. The Hellions took all of that away from them, and they would never get it back. I didn’t think for a second that I hadn’t just been lucky with my kill. If there were less Junkers to feed on, if Nash and Sawyer hadn’t distracted the Hellion from me, I would never have survived. I’d have been lying there on the ground, a piece of hollow meat with a ravaged throat, all my lifeblood filling the belly

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