Dragon Coast by Greg van Eekhout Read Free Book Online Page B

Roth.
    â€œYou remember the first words you ever said to me, Otis? I only remember them because you said the same exact thing to all the kids you took in. And you took in a lot of us. ‘I won’t harm you. I won’t beat you. I won’t rape you. Neither will anyone else who works for me. I’m Otis Roth, and nobody will dare.’ I guess some of us were comforted by that. In certain circumstances, it could sound kind of nice. But I heard it differently. I heard it more like, ‘I won’t harm you unless I want to. Nobody else will harm you, because you belong to me. I’m Otis Roth, and I own you.’”
    Her shovel bit into earth.
    Otis had taken Cassandra in because her parents owed him money they couldn’t pay back, and Cassandra was collateral. Her first night in his warehouse, in her bed with new, stiff sheets, she shoved her face into her pillow and cried as softly as she could. This was her life now. Her parents weren’t picking her up tomorrow. She knew how much money they owed, and how much money they usually made on jobs, because she often pretended to be asleep while they talked money and schemes. They would never be able to pay off their debt unless they took on bigger and riskier jobs. They’d probably die trying.
    She could run away, but then Otis would have them killed.
    As it turned out, they managed to die without Otis’s help, only a few months later. It wasn’t even a big job, just a payroll robbery that turned into a shootout. The take wouldn’t have even made a dent in their debt to Otis.
    And it was Otis who came to tell her.
    â€œYou tried to lay it on me gently,” Cassandra said, wiping sweat off the back of her neck. She’d probably dug her hole deep enough, but she didn’t want animals undoing her work, so she kept tossing up shovelfuls of dirt. “And I think I took it pretty well, considering. No hysterics. No tantrums. There were some of your guys waiting outside my room in case I flipped out and attacked you. But all I did was ask if you were going to set me free now that my parents were dead. I didn’t want revenge. I wanted my mom and dad back. But you know me, always the realist. I wasn’t going to get what I wanted. So I was willing to settle for my freedom. And you told me, just seconds after I learned my parents were shot up and their bodies being hauled to the city furnaces, that the terms of the contract meant I would remain in your care until the debt was paid or my eighteenth birthday. I think that’s when I started crying. But not too much. Remember what you said to comfort me? I’ll never forget your kindness. You said, ‘Be patient, Cassandra. It’s just until you’re eighteen. And you’re almost fourteen now.’”
    Cassandra was not patient. She was industrious. True to his word, Otis gave her an education. Not in subjects like history and algebra, but his henchminions tutored her in marksmanship and nose-breaking and pickpocketing and, eventually, safecracking. She was a good pupil.
    Otis had his own reasons for giving her skills—there was no point in using someone if she wasn’t useful. She had her own reasons for accepting his tutelage. Once she turned eighteen, she’d need to make her own way in the world.
    A bee landed on the taped-tight bundle of plastic sheeting on the edge of her hole. She shooed it away and kept digging.
    Along with marketable skills, she’d also found a bit of higher purpose in Otis’s warehouse. Some of the other little thieves Otis took in weren’t as self-sufficient as she was. They’d eat sugar three meals a day if you’d let them, or they’d get stupid and try to filch little nuggets of the osteomancy Otis trafficked. They needed a big sister, and Cassandra accepted that as her job. Without anyone to take care of her, she found she was good at taking care of others.
    There was one boy in particular who