Description
Robado was a night place, and tonight Lucha Moya was glad of it. In night places, no one looked twice at a girl like her. Even one with a long knife strapped to her belt. In the south ward, at the very tip of the city, the streets were already filling with workers ready to celebrate the end of a grueling day. Revelry wasn’t Lucha’s purpose tonight, but the crowd served her needs nonetheless. She slipped in among the bodies, moving north, trusting that her expression would deter conversation if her knife didn’t. She had no friends to worry about offending. None in the south ward, and none in this entire cursed city.
But no one came to the Scar—named for its utterly barren land—to make friends. In fact, no one came here at all. You were born here, you died here, and you lamented your rotten luck every day in between. Lucha lamented her own as she fought her way out of the neighborhood she called home. The long, windowless manufacturing buildings with dilapidated worker housing crowded in alongside them. The narrow tail of land pushing right up to the bank of the blighted salt river. Too many bodies, Lucha thought. Not enough space to breathe. But that was how it had always been. If you wanted air, you had to pay for it. And the price was too high for most.
