Act I: The Debt of Breath

  “Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is rightwise king born of all England.” - Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur

  That was the night I first heard the King of the Undead. Words stolen through a man who died twice. I didn’t understand. Hunger I knew. Fear too. And a name I wasn’t built to carry.

  The market should have closed at dusk. Instead, oil lamps guttered under patched awnings, coughing smoke while hands kept worrying over coins.

  I wasn’t there to buy. I was there to wait, with nothing to spend but time. The kind of waiting that gets you noticed by the wrong eyes when you are a girl with a runaway's tattoo and no coin for bread.

  A bell tolled from the watchtower, once, then again, as if it forgot the count halfway through.

  The stalls along the uphill lane had not agreed with the bell. A fishmonger still trimmed fins by feel. A woman who sold ribbon had stacked her wares into a tower no one would climb. I walked with my hands in my pockets because when you have nothing you cannot afford to prove it.

  Two boys played chase around a stack of crates; one worked the other’s purse when the chase made them collide. I saw the switch the way foxes see traps. Cloth rasped; the purse slid into a sleeve. The second boy laughed too loud. The stall keeper called them sweet names and reached under his counter for the stick he kept for rats.

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  I slid in sideways, close enough to turn their eyes without blocking the stall keeper. I pointed at the sky and said, “Look.” No one looks when a girl tells them to look. But everyone looks when anyone does. The stall keeper looked. The boys looked. A gull wheeled and left a white insult on the ribbon tower. The stall keeper crossed himself and spat.

  The stall keeper swore at omens instead of boys. The boys ran. One of them brushed my sleeve and a loaf crust fell into my pocket out of respect for the world.

  I didn’t outrun the moment. The stall keeper tripped over it first.

  A man stumbled into the alley between the apothecary and the scribe, both hands at his throat like he was holding words inside.

  I followed; hunger makes me believe I can bargain with luck.

  He fell to his knees. A thin stiletto sat under the skull, bright, blood jeweling at the hilt.

  I didn’t scream. I flattened to the scribe’s doorframe and listened.

  The stranger looked straight at me. His eyes were wide, blood bubbling on his lips. With shaking fingers, he thrust a purse into my hand.

  His voice cracked, brittle as glass. “Give,” he croaked. “And you...”

  Before he could finish, his eyes rolled white. His head sagged. I caught his wrist on instinct, as if holding his wrist might keep the debt off my name.

  His pulse stopped.

  Then, impossibly, he sat up.

  Not fully. His spine snapped upright, jaw working like a dog gnawing what wasn't there. His chest did not rise. His lips moved, yet no air left him. The voice that came was too deep, windless, teeth barely parting, no fog on the night air.

  “Tell him, Arthur, he was right.”

  I froze. Arthur? The corpse whispered the name again.