For twenty years in his burned timeline, Ren-the-Cinder had lived not as a warrior, not as an emperor, and not as a holy saint.
He had lived as a rat.
He knew the anatomy of great cities the way an embalmer knew the intestines of a corpse. To a judge, a palace was an expression of classical stonework. To the Coward, a palace was a collection of coal chutes, dumbwaiter shafts, laundry chimney pipes, and drainage vents through which a thin, frightened man could scramble. Meanwhile, the drawing rooms were being put to the sword.
Now, with three thousand refugees behind him, Ren-the-Cinder carried out the crowning masterpiece of his miserable, scared existence.
He didn’t lead the column down the wide, burning boulevards where shard-hounds and fleeing aristocrats were tearing each other to pieces.
He led them through the hidden underbelly of the High Spires.
With his ring of sixteen scrap-brass skeleton keys held in his mouth like an iron bit, the Coward sprinted from garden wall to cellar door, his hands moving with supernatural, twitchy speed.
Click-clack.
