Agent Round: YA Fantasy - Catacomb Saints

Title: Catacomb Saints

Entry Nickname: Cryptopolis 

Word count: 80,000

Genre: YA Fantasy

Query 

For sixteen-year-old Davi, the darkness has never mattered. A petty pickpocket by night and a worthless burden on society by day, she has only ever wanted to be left alone to live what little life society affords castoffs like her. Trouble is, this time out, Davi's stolen something that isn’t supposed to exist, from a man who isn’t supposed to be alive. The Bone Key might be a treasure worth a thousand kingdoms with power enough to raise the dead, but as far as Davi is concerned, the only two things the eerie metal relic is worth is getting the bounty off her head and saving her own life. 

Thrust into the heart of a bitter centuries-old civil war between the two great kingdoms of Thessaly and Rhone, Davi must navigate the unfamiliar world of hired royal assassins, deadly artifacts, political intrigue, and nebulous legend if she has even a prayer of not only returning the Key, but making it out alive. But the longer she has the Key, the more she learns about it—and herself—the more she understands that returning the relic is the very last thing she could ever do. If she is to survive, Davi must not only uncover the truth behind the Bone Key’s past, but her own.

First 250:

It wasn’t much, home. If you could even call it that. But it had three walls, a rough concrete ledge for sleeping, and it was all I had. For someone who could count on the tip of her newly missing little finger the number of possessions she could lawfully lay claim to, that actually meant something. Around here, people had lost more trying to hold on to far less.

“Davi?

I had neither the time nor the patience for the kid right now. I ignored her and shuffled backwards, my arm just brushing the soft leather of my newly acquired prize. 

I weighed the purse in my hand. I sure as hell hoped what was inside was worth it. Of course, like most things I managed to steal off the spoiled brats up in the Night Market, it probably wasn’t. Besides, losing the red-cloaked idiots of the City Guard, unlike my pinky, had taken far longer than expected. Now all I wanted was to sleep. Well, to eat and sleep. And yet only one of those was likely to happen tonight.

Like a roach to a crumb, the enquiry came again and I exhaled, tossing the pouch aside.

“What is it, Serri?” I demanded.

Below the fractured lip of my concrete ledge the familiar tangle of dirty blonde hair fidgeted. Like a pixie-sized plague, no matter what I said or did, Serri always came back.

“Davi?” Serri said, her voice as narrow as a shaft of distant sunlight.