The laughter drew closer. The sound was crude—a man’s laughter. Others joined in.

I wadded up the cloth and shoved it inside my shirt, then tucked the knife and halfpence into the pocket of my breeches. Often men would poke their heads into our little niche while we were there, looking to steal from us, or worse. My mother would brandish the knife, driving them back. Except it was the light in her eyes that kept them at bay more than the blade. They would spark green in the blackness, and even I would be afraid of her. The men would snarl and curse. Witch, they’d call her, and Jezebel. But they would leave us alone.

A woman’s scream echoed up the tunnel, drowned out by the sound of rude jeers. That would keep them occupied, at least for a short while. I crawled through the niche’s opening and lowered myself down to the floor of the tunnel, making no noise. Red light flickered from down the passage, and shadows writhed there. I turned and ran up the tunnel as fast as my short legs would take me.

“Hey, there!” a rough voice shouted behind me. “I see you, little rat. Come back here!”

The heavy sound of boots thumped behind me, and I heard the grunting of breath, but I didn’t look back. I kept my head down, pumping my arms, and rounded a bend in the tunnel. Just ahead was a crack in the wall. It was barely more than two hands wide, but I was such a skinny little thing that I slithered through, quick as a snake.

A hand shot in after me, clamping around my ankle.

“Now I got you,” said a man’s voice, thick and slurred from whiskey. “No need to wait my turn. There’s nothing they can do with a lady I can’t do with you. Now come back here, little rat.”

Another hand pawed up my leg. I kicked back with my bare foot, contacting something soft and fleshy, mashing it beneath my heel. By the wet cry of pain I guessed it was his nose. The hands let go.

Free of his grasp, I wriggled up the passage, which had been carved into the stone not by human hands but by the action of flowing water long ago. There were many such ways, connecting with the crypts and passages that had been hewn beneath the foundations of the city, and like all the children who dwelled down there—the ones who survived, at any rate—I had explored many of them. I knew that crack connected to a drain that spilled out on Grassmarket Street, in the shadow of the castle.

However, it had been at least a year since I had last used that particular passage, and I had grown. Bony as I was, I came to a bend where my chest became wedged. Panic gripped me, and I feared I would have to shimmy back down. Or worse yet, that I was stuck, and that some smaller child in years to come would find my bones and take the knife and coin and silver cloth even as I had taken them from the corpse of my mother.

I strained with all the might in my skinny limbs, bracing my feet against either side of the crack. Stone sliced though my shirt and bit into my chest, drawing blood, and the fluid acted as a lubricant. My body popped through the narrows and tumbled down the crack into a larger way—a clay pipe slicked with water and mold. Out of control, I slid down the pipe toward a circle of gray light that rapidly dilated before me. I shot through the hole, landing on hard stones, wet with slime like a newborn baby. Air rushed into my lungs, hard and shuddering, as if they had never drawn a breath before.

I looked up, squinting against the sullen daylight, which seemed inordinately bright to my dark-adjusted eyes. When was the last time my mother had brought me up to the surface? I could not remember. People walked by, but no one paid me more heed than they would a rat that had just crawled from the sewer. I touched my chest, wincing, and my hand came away red with blood. It hurt, but I had suffered worse. I was alive, and indeed I was like an infant again, wet with ichor, birthed from the canal of the drain, with an entire new life before me.

It was not, as I would come to learn, the last time in my existence I would be reborn.

I spent that first morning on the surface lurking in the stairs and walled closes along the Grassmarket. Horses trotted down the muddy street, pulling glossy carriages; trinkets of gold and silver shone behind shop windows. Though tempted to venture closer, I kept to the shadows, watching as folk in fine clothes passed by, conscious of the soiled rags that clad my own raw-boned form. This world was strange to me, and though it seemed fair compared to the labyrinth below, I sensed it was every bit as perilous.

As the day wore on I grew bolder and crept up the steep curve of Candlemaker Row, passing—unbeknownst to me at the time—the shop where my mother had spent her childhood. It was the rich smells of roasted meat and tobacco, drifting from the pubs that lined High Street, which lured me upwards.

The afternoon was drawing on toward evening, but it was June and still light. I skulked along alleys like the numerous stray dogs, obeying the instinct to keep out of sight. Finally, as dusk stole through the city, I ducked into a courtyard tucked among tall buildings—a place I would later come to know as Advocate’s Close, and a good bet for picking a rich man’s pocket.

Stairs led down to a door in which a small window glowed with the warmest yellow light I had ever seen. It was the back entrance to one of the pubs that faced High Street. The door opened, and more light spilled out, along with raucous laughter. A woman with frowsy hair and an ample bosom emptied the contents of a bucket on the cobbles.

“Here ’tis, ye whelps,” she called. “Coom an’ take it away fer me.” She stepped inside and shut the door.

Several dogs slunk from the shadows toward the heap of slop. I was faster. I leaped forward, snarling as I brandished the knife I had stolen from my mother, and to my surprise the dogs slunk back, tails between their legs. I grabbed as many of the choicest bones as I could, then ran across the close, leaving the rest for the curs.

I climbed atop a wall, then ate. The bones were legs of lambs pulled from a soup pot, and there was little meat left on them, meant as they were for the dogs, but to me they comprised a succulent feast. I ate, smacking my lips, enjoying the feel of gristle against my teeth and gums. I cracked the bones against the wall and sucked the marrow out.

Finally I was done. The dogs were fled. Above, the last gray light was fading from the sky. It was time to find a place to curl up and hide for the night—time to go back below the city. I wiped my greasy hands on my shirt, and as I did I felt a lump within.

I pulled it out. It was the silver cloth I had taken from my mother. My shirt was stained with blood, yet the silver cloth remained as clean as before. I held it up, marveling at the silken feel. It seemed to catch the twilight, shimmering in the gloom.

“Hey, you up there!”

I knew at once there was nowhere to run. The back entrance by which I had entered the close was now barred with an iron gate. Someone must have locked it as dusk fell, and in the rapture of gnawing on the bones I had failed to notice. There were several other doors lining the close, but I was certain all would be locked, save perhaps the back door to the pub. However, I dared not try that way. One big hand on my scrawny neck, and my flight would be in vain.

The only other way out of the close was by the main archway that led out onto High Street. Two men stood in that archway.

“Where did you get that?” one of the men said, pointing at the silver cloth.

He was corpulent, his jowls spilling out of a lace-collared shirt. His velvet coat was just as rich, sewn with brass buttons, and at first I supposed him some sort of lord. When I did not answer him, he turned to his companion. “This will take just a moment.”