Page 27 of The Last One
Jadon rolls his eyes and hangs the meat cleaver on a nail over the worktable. “Sorry about all the noise, Kai. I hope I didn’t wake you with all that banging.”
“Not at all.” My face and neck warm as I remember my dream and resist the urge to fidget. “Olivia was just sharing a story with me about a deity named ‘Kaivara.’”
His eyebrows lift. “I’ve heard that name before. From Dashmala nomads around Devour.”
My heart jumps. “Really?”
“When were you at the Sea of Devour?” Olivia asks her brother.
He brushes her comment away with a flip of his hand and says to me, “You know what? They sew and stitch circles in their clothes. Brand it on their horses’ rumps. And they carry these totems of their goddess, ‘Kaivara.’ That would make sense if that’s where you’re from—if you’re one of those people.”
“Not Chesterby after all?” I say.
“Maybe, maybe not.” He grabs short strips of iron from a bucket.
“While I’m earning twelve geld,” I say, “I’ll figure out a way to get back to Devour. Maybe I can find a sage in the next town over who’d know about Chesterby and Kaivara.” For the first time since landing here, I feel a solid sense of identity, direction, purpose.
In my mind’s eye, I see… Rays from the daystar shining across fields of stone. I see… A colorless sea, bleached shells and stones covering its banks. I see… Shining jewel-colored lights racing across the sky and disappearing into the clouds…
Bam!
I startle, knocked from my vision and pulled back into the Ealdrehrts’ forge.
Jadon has resumed work. “Sorry. Needed to get back to it before it turned cold.” He lifts the hammer again and strikes a glowing orange, mean-looking rod of steel between the vise.
My hands shake, and I step back. This banging sounds close to that steel in my dream, after the earth split apart.
“What are you making now?” Hopefully, Jadon doesn’t notice my voice wavering. “A pike? A lance?” Good. Back to sounding assured and solid.
Jadon blinks at me. “Spoons.”
For some reason, this towering, well-muscled man creating spoons out of fire and ore seems off. “Ah. Useful.” I rub my sweaty hands on my skirt. Perhaps it’s the memory or the violence from my dream, but my skin feels tight and itchy and my breathing hitches in my chest and I’m ready to leave this part of the barn. “Work,” I say. “Gery’s farm next door first, yes?”
“Yep.” Jadon shoots me a smile. “You’ll earn twelve geld in no time. And then you’ll be free of Maford and free of us.”
I nod and follow Olivia out of the barn.
Being free of Jadon?
Hmm.
For some reason, that thought chills my heart.
7
After a breakfast of brown bread, cheese, and boiled potatoes, I walk to Gery’s, ready to earn twelve geld doing farm work.
When I arrive, Gery, a bone-thin man with a hound dog face and strong hands, stands on the other side of his barn with a soiled handkerchief held to his mouth. Between coughing fits, he nods to the cow. “Her name’s Molly.” He points to the milking pail and then a bag of oats for his horses.
“When you’re done with all that.” He gestures toward a pile of newly shorn sheep wool. “Bag that up for the market.” Once he assigns me these tasks, Gery shuffles back to his house and to his wife, who’s still too ill to leave her bed.
I dump oats in the trough for the horses. “Enjoy, lovelies,” I say.
That was easy.
There’s a stool near the door, and I set it on the right side of the cow. “I have no idea how to do this,” I tell Molly, stroking her bangs. “You’re gonna have to take the lead.”
Molly blinks her big black cow eyes at me and snuffles. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think she was laughing at me.
