Chapter 15 #4
The woman glanced between us, hugging two frightened children against her legs whose feet were wrapped in torn cloth.
This whole situation was an outrage to me, knowing they wouldn’t find the salvation they were hoping for when they reached the gates of my city.
This should have been a safe haven for them, but instead, the empress had ensured they’d be offered nothing.
“She ain’t got any coin,” the baker hissed at me. “What am I s’posed to do? I gotta make a livin’.”
I noticed Drake appearing behind him out of nowhere, clearly using his Affinities to sneak around as usual.
He casually stole bread rolls out of the man’s basket and pushed them into his pockets.
I shook my head minutely at him in an order to stop, but he ignored me, taking a savage bite out of one while the woman and her kids looked to him with an ache of hunger in their eyes.
In the next move, Drake took the man’s coin purse from his pocket and started rifling through the contents, my eyes shifting from him and back to the baker who was now monologuing at me about his need to buy a new rolling pin for his bakery.
Drake causally stepped around the baker, subtly pushing the purse into my hand and winking at me before walking away after the members of his gang.
My fingers closed around the purse, not wanting the man to see it in case he recognised it, discomfort crawling up my spine.
I could almost hear Marik barking an order in my ear to kneel, feel him ripping the tunic from my back and the kiss of the nine tails of his whip.
But then I looked at the hungry people around me and found myself tipping the coins into my hand and holding them out to the man.
“This for all of your bread,” I said firmly and his eyes raised at the pile of coins in my palm.
“Well, now, not all of it. Can’t do all of it. But a fair bit, eh?” He tried to snatch the coins but I drew my hand away.
“All of it,” I snarled and he backed up at my tone, his lips parting before he gave in and started nodding, handing over the basket of bread as I poured the coins into his outstretched palms.
I handed it straight over to the woman and she burst into tears, offering it to her children immediately before passing it out to everyone around her.
I marched away, hurrying after Drake as heat burned the back of my neck over what I’d just done. I was a con man. A fucking dirty, cheating thief.
“’Ang on – wait a minute!” the baker shouted after me. “Where’s my purse?!”
I stuffed it into my pocket, picking up my pace and not looking back as I joined Drake who started laughing like an arsehole.
He nudged me with his elbow, offering me a bread roll despite his earlier claim that he wouldn’t be offering me food again and I shook my head mutely.
“You make a good distraction, mate. Thanks for that.”
“I wasn’t distracting him for you,” I muttered angrily.
“Then why didn’t you tell him what I was doing?” he asked, giving me a knowing look like he’d already figured out something about me which I was desperate to deny.
“I…” Apparently, I didn’t have an answer for that.
“See, you’re gonna make a fine criminal one day. I’m so proud of you,” he taunted.
“Shut up,” I growled. “I’m not a criminal.”
“Then why’d you just steal that man’s bread?”
“I didn’t,” I hissed. “You were the one who stole his coin.”
“Yeah, and you were the one who used it to buy his bread. All of his bread as well, you didn’t even leave him a single roll. Fucking savage, mate.”
“Those people were hungry,” I insisted, trying to validate the decision I’d made, but I was torn between two opposing forces. I had committed a crime, but I had done it for good reason.
“By the Fallen, even when you’re being a criminal, you’re noble about it.
Didn’t you even take one for yourself?” He patted down my pockets, finding them empty and he shook his head at me like I disgusted him.
“I swear to the gods, Cassius, if you die before you show me where my treasure is because you’re off feeding your meals to a hungry rabbit that gives you the big eyes, I will follow you into the underworld and drag you back here by the throat. ”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I growled.
“What’s ridiculous, mate, is you acting like you still live to serve the crown, but maybe I shouldn’t have expected anymore from a man who was taught to be nothing more than a number in the guards’ ranks.
” He shrugged and I tried not to let those words get under my skin, but my fingers went instinctively to the number behind my ear which was now scabbed over from where he’d cut through it.
I am number two hundred and eighty-seven. And I am made of steel.
I’d said those words on repeat while my captain stood over me and I did endless press-ups in the dirt.
I was just a number, that was the point.
A man bent and beaten under the hottest flames, forged into a weapon meant to protect the empire.
I’d chosen that life to keep my family in their home, it had been my responsibility to do so, and I’d made the sacrifice willingly to protect them.
“You do realise that you helped those people too, don’t you?” I challenged, trying to turn his attention from me. “I couldn’t have given them that bread without your interference.”
“You mean that grubby looking woman and her little brats?” he asked, feigning horror at the idea. “I did no such thing.”
“Clearly you knew what I would do with that money once you handed it to me,” I insisted but he just shook his head.
“I didn’t,” he replied. “I mean, yeah, I thought you might buy them a loaf or two, what with that indignant look you had etched all over your face, but I wanted to see what you’d do with it for myself.
I wondered if you really were so morally straightlaced that you would simply hand it back to him, or if you were as corrupt as me and would just keep it all for yourself.
I wouldn’t have guessed you’d go and feed a bunch of hungry mouths with every last coin.
” He snorted a laugh like what I’d done both amused and surprised him and I frowned at his assessment of me.
“Feeding them was the right thing to do,” I said firmly.
“Uh-huh,” he agreed. “So you’ll be returning to feed them again at noon will you?
Or at dusk? Or have you lost interest in your little charity cases now that you can pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself on feeding the poor?
And what about the ones who didn’t get a morsel from your generosity?
How’re you gonna feed them?” He swept a hand out to indicate the huge line of refugees who we were still passing by.
There were no more mercenaries or hired swords among these people.
Several of the men carried weapons or even clasped large sticks which they had clearly used to defend themselves while they were on the road, but the harrowed look in all of their eyes said there had been plenty of struggles throughout their journey.
My stomach twisted as I spotted more hungry children and my brow dropped at the reality of their situation.
“At least I did something,” I muttered and for once Drake didn’t reply with any kind of mocking or accusations about me wasting my time.
He sighed, patting me on the shoulder and almost seeming like he gave a shit too before he leaned in closer and spoke again, completely changing the subject and acting as though none of what we’d just discussed bothered him at all.
“If the emperor ordered you to stab yourself in the eye, would you do it?” Drake asked conversationally.
“Yes,” I said and he laughed obnoxiously.
“What if he ordered you to bend over and shove a coconut up your arse?” he asked, grinning at his new game.
“I have to do anything he tells me to,” I said stiffly.
“So, yes?” he pushed and I pressed my lips together.
“Yes, Drake. Anything he asks of me, I must do.”
“Wow, I can’t believe you shoved a whole coconut up your arse, mate. How’d you get it in there?”
“I did not shove a fucking coconut up my arse.”
He chuckled, waving me off as if I was lying. “What if he asked you to do something physically impossible? Like lick your own elbow.” He lifted his arm, trying to lick his elbow, looking like an idiot as his tongue stretched desperately towards it and I broke a grin at his idiocy.
He continued on with his line of questioning, coming up with more and more ridiculous orders the emperor might ask of me, and I soon found the game less annoying and more amusing – apart from the dark thought circling in the back of my mind that reminded me of just how little worth I held.
My number was the sum total of all I was, and even that had been stripped from me now.
We soon left the gates far behind, passing through the farmland surrounding the city, the lush greenery sustained by the little streams carved all across the land here which were fed by the Carlell River that passed through the centre of the city.
We reached the verges of the city where a few farmers and tradesmen milled about at the point where a crossroad met the Lyrian Desert.
Left led to Cartlanna if you walked far enough, the land meeting the sea where the city sat like a jewel watching the waves crash against its shores.
Their fleet was the finest in the known world, sailing the cerulean ocean with their white and blue sails always present on the water, beyond the sweeping vineyards which ringed the city itself.
Or you could turn south before then, cross the Carlell River and follow the coast to the cities of Shamba and Rothstern.
Shamba was set among the black volcanic rock formations left behind by an extinct volcano which had supposedly spouted lava from the sea during a conflict between Vargesh, the god of all water and Takari, the god of land and growth three thousand years ago.