City of Saints & Thieves(29)

“You will use today to finish your school assignments.”

“I—there are a lot of—”

Mr. Greyhill shakes out his paper, looks at his son over the front page.

Michael swallows. “Yes, sir.”

In the silence that follows, Mrs. Greyhill manages to press her smile back on. “So, Christina,” she says. “Abroad on scholarship, Michael tells us. So fortunate for you.”

“I hardly believe it myself,” I agree, glancing at Michael.

“And your sister, Catherine? She’s well?” Mr. G asks, putting the paper down to carefully stir his coffee.

Her name catches me off guard. I hadn’t even thought about what to say about Kiki. I want to kick myself. Finally, I nod. “She’s in school here in Sangui. She has a scholarship too.”

“Both of you with anonymous benefactors,” Mrs. Greyhill says. “You’re so fortunate. Most orphans have such hard lives.”

I resist climbing over the beautiful mahogany table to throttle her. “Yes, madam.”

“We wondered what had happened to you,” Mr. Greyhill says.

“I should have written,” I say, attempting to collect myself. “But after my mother . . . I just wanted to forget.” I rally everything I’ve got to give them my best brave-little-girl smile.

For a second, Mr. Greyhill’s composure is broken and his face goes oddly slack. “Of course.”

Mrs. G is motionless, but I can see the tendons in her neck straining. “Clotilde,” she says, loud enough to make me start.

Clotilde pops around the door, a little too quickly. She’s been eavesdropping, I realize. I’m going to have to be careful about that.

She hurries forward with the tea, but Mrs. Greyhill raises a manicured hand to stop her. “Tell the driver we’re ready. I’ll be in the foyer.” Without another word or look at her husband or son, she stands and walks out of the room, her heels a clipped staccato.

The sound of her angry shoes sends a small, delicious thrill through me. Mr. Greyhill wipes his mouth, his shoulders sagging just a fraction. He stands too.

In a sudden moment of inspiration, I rise out of my chair as they leave, like I’ve seen people do in movies. Michael watches me like he’s worried I might do something he’ll regret.

But I just smile. After all, I’m a mannered young lady. “Have a nice time at services, Mr. Greyhill.”

“Thank you, Christina,” Mr. G says, before following his wife out of the dining room.

“Say a prayer for my mother,” I say softly to the space that he leaves when he’s gone.





FOURTEEN


Rule 11: If you want to go forward, sometimes you need to flip all the way over backward first.

? ? ?

Mama used to say I needed role models. I think she was talking about the saints. But if you are a thief, these are your heroes: Catwoman. Robin Hood, obviously. But not just them. There are others you should know: Phoolan Devi, vengeance-delivering “bandit queen” of India. Zheng Shi, captain of three hundred ships on the South China Sea and badass lady pirate. Not your typical heroes. Murderers, most of them. They’re not winning any awards for sportsmanship. But if you think they didn’t follow rules, or that they didn’t know right from wrong, you’re very mistaken.

What do they have in common? Well, they’re good thieves, of course, or they wouldn’t be famous. But the other thing that ties them all together is what made them thieves and outlaws in the first place: They all have their own little monsters caged up inside of them. Furies that urge them toward blood. Scaly, clawed things that were born in that moment when the world went so wrong that anything was possible, even the creation of monsters.

Because that’s what happened. At some point, someone did them all wrong. Very wrong. Monster-making wrong. They were handed over as brides at twelve years old. Sold as prostitutes to settle fathers’ debts. Pimped out, treated as property. Battered, almost completely broken.

Almost.

Look it up. You’ll see.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, Boyboy says. My heroes’ actions aren’t extreme. They are just doing what is necessary to make the universe balanced again.

Backward, to go forward.

? ? ?

Normally, girls don’t do the whole Goonda boot-camp thing. They get sent out to the corner in a short skirt or, if they’re lucky, they get to run errands. But Mr. Omoko told Bug Eye to make an exception for me, so I trained with the boys to become one of his soldiers.

I decided to set some simple goals, before moving on to how exactly I would get my revenge. For now, I would run faster, climb better, fight harder, be smarter, more of a shadow, a nothing, than any of the other Goonda boys.

I moved out of the warehouse and found a better squat: my roof. The Goondas haven’t found it yet, and I intend to keep it that way. I wanted to make sure that never again would I wake up with fingers in my pockets. But I was back every morning, the first one ready for Bug Eye’s training: fighting, tactics, weapons. We were more like an army than a gang.

At first I just got pulverized like the other boys. But eventually I learned to fight dirty, and to be quick, and listen for soft footsteps creeping up behind me. I learned how to hurt people, and how to be hurt but not show it. The training wasn’t pretty, but after a while I found that I liked pain better than emptiness. The little monster inside of me fed on the violence and grew strong. I imagined it as a green tiger with enormous teeth. It was quiet and prowled the cage of my ribs and licked its lips.