Page 16 of The Last One
Justthinkingabout working for anyone in this town makes me boil. How long will it take to do what I must before I can leave? Maybe I can take my shit without anyone knowing and slip into the night like a phantom. Let the true culprit in all of this, Olivia, figure out how to pay off that twelve geld.
I follow the siblings to a grove of blue firs near the edge of town. I hear Olivia saying, “…couldn’t let her stay there.”
We’re heading toward a stone house with a thatched roof and a dying flower bed. Another stout dwelling squats beside it, smaller than the house and covered with soot. The yard is also covered with soot, and black dust has settled on every surface, including the small circle-with-paddles nailed above the barn doors.
“Jadon,” Olivia continues, her voice prickly, “are you even listening to me? We may be poor right now, but we’re not despicable. You know what unspeakable things Narder does to some of his prisoners. Were we supposed to just let herrotin that place?”
Jadon shoots his sister a glare, then looks back at me. “I don’t want you rotting anywhere. Please don’t think that. It’s just…complicated.” He nods at Olivia. “And she knows it.” His shoulders rise and fall as he takes a deep breath. “I’ll get blankets.” He heads to the nicer cottage.
Wide-eyed, I ask, “What unspeakable things does Narder do to prisoners?”
Olivia grimaces. “Didn’t I just use the word ‘unspeakable’?”
I hear her thoughts, though, and those things Narder does to some of his prisoners are so unthinkable that I shiver in horror. Those poor souls locked in that horrendous jail. “Why won’t someone stop him?”
“We’ve tried, but everyone’s scared of him. You saw how no one spoke up. How no one stopped him from grabbing you like that. Jadon’s come close to killing Johny a few times, but he doesn’t want me in danger if something happens to him.
“And,” she continues, “Narder arranges for the wanderweavers to include us on their market routes. They’re a traveling market, basically, and they bring us food and goods, and we sell things in return. Sometimes, I sell a few of my dresses. My brother’s a blacksmith. From spoons to swords, Jadon Ealdrehrt crafts the finest tools on this side of Aldon Lake, but since no one’s around to help him at the forge, he can’t take time off to go purchase supplies at another village. We’d starve and freeze to death if it wasn’t for the wanderweavers, so—and it pains me to say this—Narder has to stay.”
The wanderweavers. A thought flares in my mind. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I was traveling with them, and bandits were robbing my group, and I tried to escape, but one bandit caught up to me, and we fought, and he hit me on the head, I blacked out, and he left me for dead.
My skin flushes, and I look back to the village square and those traveling merchants plying their wares. Maybe that’s why my clothes are fancier and brightly colored. Because I roam from one town to the next with a caravan of wanderweavers. But if I’m one of those merchants, someone would’ve recognized me. Idostand out. Someone would’ve fought for me and demanded my freedom. They would’ve pooled their geld and paid my bond.
That didn’t happen, though. The wanderweavers looked at me like the villagers had: a giant near-naked stranger chasing a tiny, sickly villager from cart to cart.
No, these merchants can’t be my companions. I need to leave as soon as possible. Maybe Iwillslip out tonight… I point at the gloves on Olivia’s hands and the boots on her feet. “I’m taking back my things. Every single item. If that means more handprints around someone’s neck, then so be it.”
Olivia curtsies, then says, “Of course.”
“Do you mean ‘Of course’ as in ‘You’ll get your clothes back’? Or do you mean ‘Of course you want your things because everything you had on was really nice’?”
I can’t determine her intent. How honest can she be wearing someone else’s boots?
Olivia tousles her hair. “I mean of course we’ll return your things after you’ve earned the twelve geld. I know: It’s awful how all of this turned out, but the law is the law, and we can’t afford to have you running off. However!” Smiling, she holds up a finger before I can protest. “I’ll let you borrow some of my clothes in the meantime. They’re almost as fancy as yours.”
Hearing the thoughts of others—this gift of mine courtesy of the woman with the silver glow—would be a glorious trick if there was also a bullshit-truth-telling crystal built in. Guess I can’t have everything.
“And I’ll even wash your clothes before I hand them back,” Olivia offers. “Can’t have you walking around in muddy leather, can we? I must admit—I felt pretty audacious wearing all your things. This weird energy was rushing through me, like I could lift a house and eat thirty chickens, and I felt my scalp tingling like my hair was being stretched, and I don’t think I would’ve been able to stand in front of Johny and Narder demanding your freedom if your cloak and vest and moth charm hadn’t made me feelinvincible.”
Her neck blazes red as she meets my gaze. “Is that how it feels to be you? Invincible?”
I blink at her, fists balling at my sides. “I wouldn’t know, since I don’t have my cloak and vest and moth charm at the moment.” Deep down, though, Idoknow. If that cloak was just a cloak, I wouldn’t be standing here right now. If that pendant was just some random piece of jewelry, I wouldn’t have risked being assaulted by two despotic shitbags. An ordinary pair of boots wouldn’t pull at me the way these boots are pulling at me right now.
Olivia only says, “Hmm,” and points past me. “That’s the barn. You can stay there.” She isn’t pointing to the nicer cottage with the cute yellow window curtains.
I cough and choke out,“There?”
Thereis where sharp, pointy, dangerous things hang from hooks, dangle from stands, and rest near an open firepit.Thereis where an anvil lives, looking heavier than all of creation and blacker than the space between the realms.Thereis where all things smell burned and sulfurous, wood-smoked and dirty. There’s a waterwheel behind the barn, but it doesn’t turn—there is no water. It’s as useless and broken as the rest of this place.
Olivia follows my gaze. “You’ll sleep in the loft over the forge. Jadon won’t be too much of a bother. He’s usually more polite than he’s acting at the moment. But he also gets cranky when he’s frustrated or hungry or breathing, so please excuse his bad manners. We were raised better than that. Well,Iwas raised better than that.”
I ignore her, since she’s still wearing boots that she stole from me as I was passed out in the woods, and is that something her parents would be proud of? But I don’t ask any of this. Instead, I focus on one of those wooden circle-with-paddles above the doors of the shack I’ll be occupying. “Tell me, what is that?”
She turns to see what I’m looking at and scrunches her eyebrows. “Seriously?”
I blink at her.Well, what is it?
“It’s a colure.”
