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On the day that they met Coty Cross, Sparrow was riding a streak of good fortune straight toward some bad decisions.
In the morning, they found a trio of copper pieces outside of their sleeping spot and took it for a good omen. At the market, they followed along behind a vendor whose basket had busted at the corner, scooping up jewel-bright berries with glee. And when a housewife spotted them eating their providential breakfast from her window, she invited them into her little yard rather than shooing them off.
After they had washed with water from the rain barrel, the woman presented them with a whole half-loaf of bread (Songtooth style, with sunflower seeds pressed into the crust) and a big wedge of cheese. She had even insisted that they trade her their filthy clothes for a hand-me-down blue frock and a pair of wool socks. Sparrow had tried to pay her with the copper pieces, but she wouldn’t take them. More fool, her.
With their appearance much improved, they headed north into Rolla at the perfect time to take advantage of the softer-hearted amongst the craftspeople and their customers. The ground was muddy and the sky grew overcast, but it stayed dry the whole day. Singing Briarbosk folk songs and elvish lullabies on a street corner proved so profitable that they were hardly even bothered when some grump chased them off. In the evening, they headed back south feeling quite accomplished, with a bit of leftover bread in their pocket and their begging cup jangling full, confident that they would beat the Deepspring rain that they could taste on the air.
Their luck ran out when they arrived to find that two teenagers had moved into their sleeping spot, and they weren't smart about it. They should have cut their losses and walked away, but they had acted rashly in outrage, and they paid for it.
Divested of the day's earnings and dirty again from being pushed to the ground until they stayed down, they slunk away in pained shame. They were tucked up in a sheltered spot that kept them out of the worst of the drizzle and feeling quite sorry for themself when another kid approached them.
“You’re Sparrow, right?”
Sparrow rubbed their eyes, careful of their raw knuckles, and blinked at the boy. They had thought he was a younger child at first, but he was just halfling-sized, and he was probably a couple of years older than their eleven. He had dark hair and a puckish, fine-featured face, and a sunny kerchief tied around his neck. They didn’t know his name, but they had seen him around when the street kids gathered to trade and gossip. He was holding an umbrella of oiled canvas and looking them over with kindly concern.
“What do you want?”
“I overheard Sam and Bogan crowing about stealing some kid’s coin and kicking them out into the rain. I recalled that you were perching ‘round these parts, so I figured that was you. Wanted to check that you were alright.”
They were touched by the notion that this boy had not only remembered where they were sleeping, but that he had thought to check on them. They tried to school their face into indifference. “They didn’t get it all. I hid a silver in my boot.”
“Good thinking. Do you remember my name?”
They shook their head, which made the bruise high on their cheek throb.
“That’s alright. It’s Coty Cross.” He stepped closer and offered them his hand to shake. His skin was warm and dry. “Ouch, looks like you got your chops busted. Do you have somewhere to go tonight?”
Another shake of their head, more careful this time.
“Alright, Sparrow. How about this? The group usually calls council to invite someone new into The Spot, but this weather is dreadful and you’ve had a rough go of it. I’ll take you to The Spot and vouch for you tonight if you can promise to abide the rules: no fighting, no nicking anyone else’s stuff, and no open flames.”
“What’s The Spot?”
“A safe place, shared by friends. Will you follow the rules?”
“I can do that,” Sparrow said slowly, “but what do you want?”
Coty gave them a knowing sort of look, but it didn’t feel like he was pitying them. If anything, they felt that he might respect their wariness. “I want to get out of this rain,” he replied, casting his eyes up at his umbrella and giving a little stomp of his muddy shoes. “You’re a bit taller than me, so you can hold this on the way. And there are plenty of ways to make yourself useful around The Spot. Do you know how to cook, by any chance?”
“I can peel potatoes,” they said, standing and taking the umbrella from him, “and chop vegetables, and stir a pot. But not much more than that.”
“That’s just fine,” he said. “We often do a one-pot sort of stew. Everyone adds something in, you know? I’m not much of a cook myself, but I’m a dab hand with a needle and thread…”
He chatted companionably as led the way to the place that Sparrow would come to think of as home. They followed along, hanging on Coty's every word and attending to the task of keeping him dry with a gravity born of gratitude.
Wintersend came in like a kraken and went out like a skiff, as the Songtooth saying went, and it wasn’t unusual for the denizens of The Spot to hole up and wait out the weather that swept in off the water. On one of those wet afternoons, Sparrow was using an incomplete deck of playing cards to teach little Marlee numbers when one of the boys, Ez, approached them.
Ez was closer to Coty’s age than theirs, but he was human and closer to Sparrow in colouring, with his light skin and blond hair. He had been the first one to call them “knife-ears” and they harboured a grudge about that, and he mocked them when they practiced the halfling language that Coty was teaching them, which put a bad taste in their mouth. But today he was holding a lovely strudel in each hand, so they were willing to hear him out.
“Aren’t you looking nice today, Sparrow.”
They wrinkled their nose. “You look ‘bout as ugly as always, Ez. What do you have there?”
“Got ‘em from the place on Eastway. Fresh baked today. Want one?”
Marlee was staring in undisguised longing at the treats, but Sparrow squinted at the boy in suspicion, trying to detect the catch. In the corner of their vision, Coty looked up from playing liar’s dice with Quinn and Lizard.
“How much, then?” they ventured.
“You can have a whole one t’yourself, for the low price of a kiss.”
Sparrow looked at the strudels, each one bigger than their whole hand. The braided pastry was perfectly golden, and they could the see the shine of something that might be fruit filling. “I want both.”
“Sure. Two kisses, then.” Ez smirked, as if thought that they would balk. Sparrow hopped lightly to their feet and brushed their faelocked hair back over their shoulders. As they stepped in close to Ez and he bent his head towards them, they saw Coty watching the exchange in uncharacteristic silence. Knowing that he was watching made them feel simultaneously self-conscious and more bold.
They pecked a kiss on Ez’s left cheek, and when they went to do the same to his right cheek, he turned his face at the last second. Their kiss landed on the skin beside his mouth; he had a fuzzy little mustache coming in, and it felt funny against their upper lip.
When they pulled back, Ez had an expression on his face like he had gotten away with something, but Sparrow decided that they would be unbothered about it. They took both pastries and skipped backwards.
“Thanks, Ez.”
When Sparrow handed Marlee one of the pastries, she wiggled in a wordless expression of delight and immediately set to covering herself in crumbs. They were grinning in vicarious pleasure when they noticed that Coty was still ignoring the dice game to watch them. They looked down at the pastry in their hand, and that self-consciousness overpowered their flash of boldness. They turned and headed deeper into The Spot to eat alone, as they often did, and tried to quash the feeling that made their cheeks hot.
They had tucked themself up onto the steps of the rickety stairs that went nowhere, and they were just about to take a first bite of their prize when Coty appeared silently before them. He walked so softly that he was often doing that. Sparrow liked to watch how he moved, trying to learn the trick of it.
“Go find your own,” they said, not unkindly. “This one is mine.”
“I’m good,” he said, taking a seat on the wooden step beside them. “I just wanted to chat.”
Sparrow took a big bite, unable to wait any longer. The crust was as flaky as they had hoped. There wasn’t much filling to it, but it was apricot, and what there was tasted so sweet and good. They were so absorbed in their enjoyment that it took them a long moment to process what Coty had said. They tried to answer, but their mouth was too full of strudel to make themself understood. They swallowed, swiped their thumb over their mouth to get the crumbs, and tried again.
“Chat about what?”
“About what happened with Ez, just now.” He had a funny look on his face that they couldn't quite identify. “You shouldn’t be trading kisses.”
They frowned. “Why not? It costs me nothing. If Ez wants to be stupid over a couple of kisses, why shouldn’t I get something good out of it?”
“Well,” he hemmed. He rubbed the back of his neck and looked up towards the dusty rafters. “Kisses might lead to… other things.”
They gave him a withering look. “I’m twelve, and I’m not a fool. I know about coupling.”
“Do you?” He returned his attention to them, and there was that funny expression again. “What do you know?”
“It can put a baby in you, if you have the right parts for it, or put a baby in someone else. The bigger kids talk a lot about it, but I don’t think they’ve actually done it. People go to the houses on the Street of Lamps for it.” Remembering their fragmented education at the orphanage, they added, “And it makes you one in the eyes of the Gods.”
“Well, I don’t know about that last bit,” he said with a laugh, “but all the rest sounds right to me. I stand corrected.”
Smug in their wisdom, Sparrow took another bite. He let them finish swallowing that one before he added, in the language of his ancestors, “You are your own person. You can do whatever you want, trade whatever you want, take whatever jobs you want. Just be smart, okay? Count your costs and set your prices carefully. And remember that you’re— ”
He finished on a halfling word that they hadn’t learned yet. They quirked their head, and he switched back to commonspeak.
“You’re valuable. What you have to offer is worth a lot.”
His words were so kind and there was such gentleness in his expression that Sparrow got hot and prickly all over. If only they could have generated more of that momentary boldness from earlier; the words that they wanted to give him in exchange were as sweet as stone fruit and sugared pastry. But they were made shy by the thought of trying to say what they felt, so they just broke the unbitten end off of their strudel and handed it to him. As he popped it in his mouth, Sparrow suspected that he might have guessed at their feelings, anyway. He was very wise, after all.
“Hiya, Cuilpy," said Coty, as he climbed up into the loft where they were hiding. The halfling word for sparrow always reminded them of a cute chirp—kwillpy. "I’ve got tonight off work and I was gonna head dockside. Do you want to shill for me?”
They were sitting next to the window and working by the last bit of daylight eking through the dirty pane. They looked up from the wooden comb stuck in the snarls of their hair, their head smarting from their futile efforts to untangle the mess. “Shell game?”
He pulled a new deck of playing cards out of his jacket pocket and brandished them with a grin. “I was thinking ‘find the lady’. You in?”
“Sure,” said Sparrow, brightening at the thought. Since their thirteenth birthday, Coty had been teaching them all about short cons, and they were eager to learn a new one. “Just give me a minute.” They gripped their hair at the root and gave the comb a decisive yank. It didn’t budge, so they pulled harder, and harder, until it snapped in two. They yelped as a few strands pulled free from their scalp, and their eyes teared up with the sting of it.
When they saw that half of the comb remained caught in their hair, they groaned. Coty couldn’t keep a straight face, and when they glared at him, he burst into laughter.
“Don’t,” they cried in dismay. “Don’t laugh! Gods-damned cheap comb… Fucking garbage…”
“I’m sorry,” he said, still laughing in a bubbly sort of way that made them want to kick him in the shins, but also made them want to laugh, too. “Would you like help?”
“I want you to make yourself useful and cut it off. And stop bloody laughing!”
His eyebrows lifted in disbelief, but he did finally stop his chortling. "Really?"
“It’s awful to keep it long,” they said, with great feeling. “It gets caught on everything. It’s too thick and it tangles so easy, and I’m fed up of trying to keep it clean,”
He shrugged agreeably. “Okay. I think there’s a pair of scissors in Quinn’s stash. I’ll go see if we can borrow ‘em.”
Sitting on the floor and chatting while Coty snipped away at the mess on their head felt a little strange, but nice. His touches were careful, and the snip snip of the scissors made them feel sort of shivery up and down their back. He was good at keeping the conversation going, even when they got stuck and weren't sure what to say.
“Do you know why I always work so hard to keep myself tidy?” His question was casual, but they sensed one of his lessons in hiding. A hank of tangled hair fell into their lap, and they brushed it away.
“‘Cause you’re a fop and a dandy?”
Coty laughed, unbothered by their repetition of what a few of the kids—and some adults—said about him. “That’s what they say. But when I keep myself well-groomed, I can go anywhere without catching a second look. It may take time and effort, but it pays off. Also, it’s easier to charm people when you’re decently comported and smell alright.”
“I don’t smell bad,” Sparrow protested.
“Well, you’re going to smell better after this, that’s for sure. I think you had moss growing in here,” he joked.
He walked in front of them to get a look at his work so far, and they took the chance to look him over. He did look smart, in his neat wool vest over his cheery yellow shirt. He was a very pretty boy, too, Sparrow thought. His features were well-defined, his dark eyes sparkled beneath epicanthic folds and delicate eyebrows, and his black hair was smooth and glossy as a bird’s wing. He was certainly the most charming of all the kids at The Spot, and he had even gotten himself hired as an assistant to a big-time bookie. There might be something to looking nice.
“Almost done,” he said. “Close your eyes, unless you want bits of hair in ‘em.”
They closed their eyes, enjoying the warmness of his hand against their forehead and anticipating a shiny new Sparrow, brought about by Coty's special attention.
“I had an idea,” Sparrow said, in halfling language. They were lying on a pile of squashy sacks in an afternoon sunbeam, dangling a pendant from their hand and watching it spin. The pale crystal at its heart caught the light and sparkled prettily.
“Oh? Hold that thought, I’m nearly finished…” Coty squinted down at the shirt that he was mending, the tip of his tongue sticking out from between his lips. After he had snapped the thread with his teeth and tested his stitches, he dropped the garment into his lap and stretched his arms out behind him. He continued their conversation in halfling language. “So, what’s your idea?”
“We make a good team, don’t we? We run a smart con together.”
“Sure, you’ve caught on real quick. Not sure I have much more to teach you, honestly. And you’ve got the fastest hands of any of us kids at The Spot, that’s for sure.”
Sparrow looked over and gave him a measured smile. “It’s the 14th of Highsummer. Your birthday is tomorrow. You'll be sixteen, right? So you’re not really a kid anymore, are you?”
“I suppose. I don’t exactly feel grown yet, but maybe no one does. I have been thinking about getting my own place, though. Maybe Quinn would go in on a room with me.” Coty walked up to them on his knees, then flopped down beside them in the sack pile. “You have that look on your face. The scheming look. What are you thinking?”
“I was thinking that I could just hock this…” They showed him the pendant, elegant and expensive. “Get a bit of coin for it. Or…” They rolled onto their side to face him directly, and they tried to sound grown-up as they presented their plan.
“What if you and I moved on to something bigger than 'find the lady' and broken pots? We could try a long game. Find a rich buyer, sell them on a sob story about an old family heirloom, sprinkle in a bit of elvish and make ‘em think this is something special. I’m thinking of calling it... 'the elven inheritance con'. Or maybe ‘the empire relic grift’. What do you think?”
He paused before answering, which didn’t feel promising. “I’d shill for you?”
They couldn’t hide their flare of defensiveness. “What, you don’t think I could handle being the face?”
“No,” he said, gently laughing. “That’s not what I meant. Your plan sounds good, actually. More risky than what we usually do, sure… But if you can pull it off, it would net you a nice score. I’m just wondering why you’d need me at all, really.”
Sparrow looked at Coty’s friendly face and considered all the ways in which he had looked out for them. They thought back on the small moments of companionship, which they wouldn’t have traded for even a shiny gold coin apiece. They remembered how he had vouched for them two years ago, too, when they were just a dirty runaway with no plans and no skills. With all of that brought into the forefront of their mind, they felt such gratitude and fondness that they had to control their face and their hands, so that they didn’t make a fool of themself.
“You know that a confidence trick goes best when a charming shill makes way for the artist. Besides…” They looked away and fiddled with the pendant, their face flushed. “You didn’t really need my help in the early days, but you let me come along anyway, and you split the take with me. Also, I still owe you for the time I botched that bulk-and-file right in front of those guards.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” he said, which only made them blush more deeply. “If you want me in on this, I think it sounds great. But if we’re going to target Marks with real money, we gotta be smart about it. That will draw much more heat than taking some drunkard’s silver.”
“Yes, of course.” He always had the best ideas, thought Sparrow. They had been right to ask him.
“And we’ll split the profits 70-30 in your favour. It’s only fair, if you’re stealing the piece and doing the biggest part of the grift,” he added magnanimously.
“Okay,” they said softly, overcome with the happiness of knowing that quick-witted Coty Cross was willing to put his trust in them. They cleared their throat and nodded. “This will be great. Just you wait and see.”
“Not a doubt in my mind,” said their friend, with a confidence as warming as the summer sun.
The weather was strange on that fateful day in early Harvestmoon. The sky was blue and the sun shone, but the mist that rolled in off the ocean was taking its time to burn off, and the air smelled salty and sour. Droplets of condensation clung to the trees and buildings and sparkled like diamonds. Sparrow was freshly fourteen-years-old, and if there had been any inauspicious portents to see that morning, they were disregarding them all.
“I don’t know,” Coty said, chewing on his lower lip. “Arthur Veramy isn’t the same as some well-to-do merchant. That family is a big deal. It’s too much heat. I don’t feel good about it.”
“Oh, come on,” Sparrow replied with a roll of their eyes. They were peering at themself in the reflection of a shop window as they adjusted their nice shirt (blue-green, to bring out their eyes) and new jacket (perfectly snug against the chill). “They’re not royalty, or evil wizards, or… chosen by the gods, or whatever the gossip is. They’re just a very rich family, and the rest of that gold is practically ours already. All that’s left is to make the trade."
As a last touch, they smoothed down their hair (short and tidy, and smelling of lavender soap) and rubbed their cheeks to pinken them. They gave their reflection a sweet smile for practice, and they were satisfied. With their pointed ears and their uncommonly pretty face, they looked every bit the inheritor of an elven heirloom.
“Cuilpy, listen to me,” Coty said, and he sounded so serious and so grown-up that they looked away from the window in surprise. “This is a bad idea. If I knew who you were going after, I would have said something sooner.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you,” they said, their brows pulling together. “I knew you’d worry too much. And it’s not like I went after him on purpose. The way that I chanced into this opportunity… I mean, we literally bumped into each other, and this Arthur was even the one who kicked it off.” They gave their friend their best smile, with extra sparkle. “Doesn’t it feel meant to be?”
“That’s a nice thought,” he said, carefully. “But I don’t think there is such a thing as ‘meant to be’. That kind of thinking is what traps people at gambling tables and makes people do foolish things.”
It was harder to hear criticism when their hopes were up, and the thought that Coty didn’t believe in them anymore was a difficult one. Did his growing up have to mean leaving them behind? Their mouth ran away with them before they could rein it in. “Are you calling me a fool? That’s rich, coming from you. I heard about how you got fired for sneaking that older boy into—”
“Sparrow!” Coty’s whole face was red and his voice cracked with anger. “What the fuck!”
They shut their mouth so fast that their teeth clicked together. They watched as he took three deep breaths to calm down, and chilly regret put out the fire of their temper.
“Don’t be mean,” he finally said. “And I’m not calling you a fool, so please don’t act like one.”
“Sorry, Coty,” Sparrow said, shoving their hands in their jacket pockets and toeing the cobblestones. “That was right awful of me to say, and I didn’t even mean it. You’re the most clever person that I know.”
“Let’s forgive and forget it,” he said, putting his own hands in his pockets. After a quiet moment, he gave a big sigh and shrug. “Alright, fine. If you’re going to do this, you should at least have someone watching your six. I’ll post up at your getaway route and wait for you, and if I see anything amiss, I’ll give a shout.”
“That’s a good idea,” they said, sincerely. “Thanks. I’ll take you out for the nicest dinner after this, okay? We’re going to eat until we're sick, and then put dessert on top of it.”
Coty laughed, but it was a little strained. “Sure, Cuilpy. But first, let’s just put one foot in front of the other."
It went bad so fast that Sparrow hardly had time to wrap their head around it. When they thought back on it afterwards, everything was jumbled and out of order, and their memories were both too-vivid and distorted by the rush of adrenaline.
Had they heard Coty shout their name before he appeared at the end of the street, pursued by two guards? Or had he turned the corner and then called out to them? Had they dropped the gold before Arthur Veramy had grabbed them, or only after?
Certainly, they had only succeeded in slipping their arm out of Veramy’s grip because Coty had barrelled into him, his head butting right into the young man’s diaphragm and winding him enough to give Sparrow an opening. Panic overtook them when they saw Veramy reaching for Coty next. Their heart pounded and their limbs moved without needing them to think about it—the flash of their little knife slicing through Veramy’s fine jacket surprised them both, and the line of blood blooming on his sleeve shocked Sparrow into stillness. (Someone would need to mend that, they had thought, stupidly.)
They remembered the feeling of Coty’s hot hand taking theirs, gripping hard enough to hurt their fingers. He had yanked them back into motion and out of their shock, and in doing so he had saved them. They were sure of that.
Could they have done the same for him? Sparrow hated this question. Even when they hadn’t been called Sparrow for a long time, this question would still have the power to sicken their stomach and make their heart ache with regret. But when they could bring themself to ask it…
There was a terrible moment, after they had scrambled up the crates that wobbled under their slight weight and pulled themself up onto the roof, but before the guards had yanked Coty backwards. In that moment, their friend had reached up to them, his eyes wide and his fingers splayed in desperation.
Had they reached back? Had they waited until after he was nabbed and the crates came crashing down before they had turned away? They believed that they had reached for him, but had they reached far enough, tried hard enough? Or had they counted the cost of escape, and paid for it with their friend's freedom?
Could they trust that last memory, captured in a glance over their shoulder while they scampered up and over the roof: Coty struggling in the arms of an armoured man, his face turned up to them and his expression aghast with betrayal? If there was truth to be found in memories so tangled with guilt and fear, they didn't know the trick of teasing it out.
On the day that Sparrow saw Coty Cross for the last time, a streak of beautiful fortune came to a truly ugly end. Regardless of what the order of events had been, or what story they might tell themself later—hidden in the back of a covered wagon leaving Songtooth, with their knees pulled to their chest and their wet face buried in their arms—they would always know who was to blame.
In their estimation, it seemed only fair that they never let themself forget it.