Sebastian

believe that was true. Even so, as he climbed he tried to empty his mind of everything but moving from one stair to the next. He didn't want to remember the other times he'd been in this city—or the one and only time he'd seen the Wizards' Hall.
    But his muscles tightened, his heart pounded, and the despair and bitter anger that had colored so much of his childhood was a heavy rock strapped to his back with chains forged by cruel words.
    He'd climbed these stairs once before.
    How old had he been? Five? Maybe six? Just lingering at the edge of the street where he lived, as much to get away from the latest woman who was looking after him as to watch three girls playing catch with a bright-colored ball. He watched them, drinking in their laughter and happiness, unaware of his own nature or why their emotions made him feel as if he were gulping down cool water after being thirsty for so long.
    A girl missed the catch, and the ball rolled right to him. He picked it up, and as he looked at the girls, he felt their happiness change to wariness. He knew what other boys would have done—kept the ball, since it was the kind of pretty toy rarely seen in this part of the city, or thrown the ball hard at one of the girls to scare her or hit her so she'd cry. But he wanted to hear the girls laugh again, so he tossed the ball gently to one of them. They studied him a moment, then went back to their game. But when the ball came around to the one who had missed it before, she motioned him forward and tossed the ball to him. And the triangle of girls became a square of four children playing catch and having fun.
    Then the woman stomped out of the building and dragged him inside to the cramped, smelly rooms he called home.
    She screamed at him about the demon inside him and the depraved nature she'd been told to watch for.
    Then she hit him, her heavy hand cracking across his face hard enough to send him to the floor.
    But he'd scrambled to his feet, dodged past her… and ran until he reached the courtyard and the Thousand Stairs to Justice.

    Some of the other women who had looked after him had been a little kinder. They'd told him his father was an important man, a wizard. But children weren't allowed to live in the Wizards' Hall, so he had to stay with them. He'd accepted that, had never questioned their explanation.
    He raced up the stairs, his young legs fueled by anger. He hadn't seen his father often, and the feelings that flowed out of the man made him uneasy, but that didn't matter now. His father was an important man. His father was a wizard. And his father, after learning how mean the woman had been, would take him someplace else to live.
    Yes, that's what would happen. He would go live in a nice house with a kind woman who didn't yell at him all the time or say bad things about him or hit him. And maybe there would be children to play with.
    Children who liked him, who wouldn't call him names.
    The need for that kind woman and those children swelled inside him, blotting out the anger. Hope filled him as he raced up the stairs.
    When he finally reached the top of the stairs and ran along the path that led to the street and the high stone walls beyond, a vine of doubt curled around the hope and tried to smother it.
    How was he supposed to get inside and find his father? What if he went inside the Petitioners' Hall and asked for Koltak and the other wizards just sent him away? He had to get inside!
    Then luck, or fate, or the nature of Ephemera gave him the opportunity. A man walked out of the wrought-iron gate next to the Petitioners' Hall and gave it a negligent shove to close it. The gate stopped a handwidth away from locking.
    He ran across the street and pulled the gate open just enough to slip inside. A different world, with more trees and greenery than he'd ever seen. He wandered along the paths, his father momentarily forgotten. It was so clean here. No smell of garbage or sour bodies.
    Then, hearing laughter, he turned and made the discovery that changed his life.
    Boys, not much older than him, running along another path toward the buildings at the other end of the courtyard garden. Boys. Living at the Wizards' Hall.
    He could have lived here, in this clean place—if his father had wanted him.
    He stepped off the path and sat down next to a bush, curling up as much as he could to keep from being noticed. He cried silently while all the cruel words that had been said to him over the years took root deep in his