Chapter Seven
It took me six trips up and down the stairs with heavy, sloshing buckets to fill a bath.
By the time I dumped the last in, I was sweating so much, I dunked myself into the frigid water without heating it first. Shocked to numbness, I used salt from a bowl beside the basin and a bar of acrid soap to get the grease and dirt and dried blood off my skin and out of my hair.
My teeth chattered so hard, the clicking filled the room as I splashed and scrubbed every bit of my skin.
Just when I thought I might die of cold, I sprang out of the bath, pink as a newborn.
I dunked my dress in the water to soak, and only then did I heat it with a burst of radiance to boil away the stench of my fear.
Crouching beside the stove to warm my shivering body, I drank goat’s milk and devoured a loaf of soft bread with blackberry jam.
I felt like a wild creature, bare toes against stone, fingers sticky.
The warmer my body got, the more it hurt.
This was only my second night in Frostbrook, but my bones told a different story.
I felt like I’d aged ten years. How could I continue at this pace?
Already, my hands were blistered, and my shoulders ached terribly from hauling water.
No one had warned me that the labor would be harder than what I’d known as a student at the House of Industry.
Recalling Julian’s words, I opened a small cabinet and found his shaving kit and an unmarked dented tin. The salve within smelled green and earthy in a distantly familiar way. It soothed the cuts on my hands and left my skin supple.
I slept restlessly and woke before dawn, my mind a reeling tangle of vines and huge bees and rocks stained with blood. Out my small window, the sunrise painted the mountains gold. I decided to get an early start, leaving for my daily chores as the sky began to turn a watery gray.
To my surprise, Julian was on his way in as I entered the courtyard. He looked somewhat startled to see me. “Off to your duties?” he asked, as if he hadn’t given me the list of tasks himself.
“And to see if I can find some trousers.” I held out my hands. The scrapes already looked less raw. “Thank you for the salve, by the way. Did you get it at the general store? I’d like to get some more.”
Julian’s gaze shifted from my hands to my face and then, oddly, to the chickens in the yard. They weren’t particularly eye-catching. Just six fat hens and a scrappy rooster. “No, it was in one of the food offerings. I don’t know who made it.”
“Maybe the healer,” I offered, recalling that Ezra had a mentor in town. “Or the midwife, anyway.”
“Perhaps.” Julian didn’t have his tools with him. He fidgeted with the cuff of his sleeve until I felt that leaving him to his inexplicable awkwardness would be a mercy.
Nodding politely, I exited the courtyard and continued on to my work.
With Ezra and his secret not quite on my mind but at the back of it, the morning passed at a snail’s pace.
I spent hours outside the Mission, inspecting the most recent work on the machinery that would eventually power the river crossing.
Most of the workers kept their distance, speaking to me politely but without warmth.
I felt alone in the crowd, aware of their glances and the way their conversations stopped when I approached.
“Alice, how many days until the main line reaches the Mission?” I asked the forewoman—an exceptionally tall woman with straw-blond hair and a nose patchy with peeling sunburn.
She pulled a notebook from her tool belt and consulted it with a squint.
“Two weeks, if we’re lucky. Bandits got the blast powder we needed to clear rock away.
We’ve got to wait for the next train before we can get started again.
” Noticing the way I craned my neck to see her notebook, she opened it and showed me the diagrams. “Got an eye for figures?”
“I’m awful at drawing up plans,” I confessed. “It makes sense in my mind, but when I put it to paper, it may as well be a child’s scrawl.”
“Takes practice, is all.” Alice gave me a toothy smile and clasped me on the shoulder. “You should keep trying. It’s a fine skill for a Conductor to have. How else can someone continue your work if you’re gone?”
My own grin faded. “Gone?”
“The rate people are dying ’round here, I figure I ought to document all I can. No telling who’s next.”
I looked around the workspace, at the crowd of people hauling stones and fitting brass fixtures to carry the spool of wire that currents of radiance would run through. No one looked ill. “What do you mean? Have workers been suffering accidents?”
Alice tucked her notebook back into her belt and gave me an odd look. “Aren’t you an orphan yourself? Surely you’re aware of the wasting.”
“I thought it was confined to the cities. Where people live in filth,” I said weakly, noting that a few workers had stopped and were listening to our conversation.
“We’ve lost four good workers to it this month alone.” Alice tapped her chest above her heart in an old-fashioned blessing. “Most of us came to the foothills to escape the wasting, but it’s a brutal hunter.”
A thin older man nudged Alice with his wrench. His skin was as wrinkled as a walnut shell. “Don’t frighten the girl.”
“I’m not frightened,” I said, aware of how much I sounded like a stubborn child.
It was true. I wasn’t scared, but I was unsettled.
The wasting had been a disease linked to poverty and poor hygiene.
Frostbrook might not be a wealthy community, but it was cleaner than anywhere I’d ever been.
It didn’t make sense for the wasting to spread here.
“My own parents were lost to it. I’ve known it my whole life. ”
“Then learn how to document your work so it outlives you,” Alice said gravely. “The stars know when it’ll come for you, or me, or any of us.”
I nodded, my mouth too dry to respond. After quickly finishing my inspections, I hurried away, as if I were somehow at risk of catching the wasting by speaking its name.
Though reason reminded me that no Child of Industry had ever been known to suffer the telltale symptoms—sudden weight loss, extreme pallor, high fevers.
In the cold season, we’d passed around wicked coughs and lingering fevers, but nothing bad enough to cause one to stop eating and drinking and waste away to little more than a bruised skeleton.
My parents had died when I was too young to recall, but my imagination—and my nightmares—left me with vivid images of a man and woman sharing a sickbed, flies feasting on their sores.
Terribly unsettled, I reminded myself that the Mission would be up and running by winter, and Julian and I would be connected to the House of Industry by a thread of radiance that traveled clear across the country, all the way back to Sterling City.
I’d spend my days working with hot radiance lines that regular citizens could not touch without burning themselves.
I’d repair radiance-powered machines. I’d maintain the Mission.
With so much work to do, I’d be too busy to fret about the wasting.
I’d probably be too busy to visit with Ezra.
The thought of that made my stomach ache.
When I finished the morning’s tasks, I set off for the general store. The shopkeeper laughed when I asked for trousers in my size. She sold me a pair of men’s trousers on credit, giving me a knowing look that she knew where to find me once I’d earned a paycheck.
“Ainsley can fix those up for you so you’re not swimming in them.”
“Is she a tailor?” I asked.
“Closest we’ve got to one,” the woman said with another boisterous, musical laugh. Her breath smelled like sweet liquor despite the early hour.
Something niggled at the back of my mind. I’d asked Ezra about a tailor, and he’d said the town had none. Surely he was close enough to Ainsley to know that she mended clothes. I’d have to ask him tomorrow.
Happy to leave the sad little cluster of buildings, I made my way to her house, finding myself eager to see her again and to check up on Henry. I’d seen too many children dead and dying, and my imagination gladly supplied me with unreasonable concerns—thoughts of Henry falling ill and suffering.
“It’s this talk of the wasting,” I muttered to myself, annoyed at the lingering thread of worry I couldn’t quite chase to its source. “There’s nothing wrong with the boy.”
As if conjured by my fretting, Henry skipped up to me on the path leading to Ainsley’s house. He had a fishing pole twice his height that bobbed above him like a long spear carried by a knight in a picture book.
“Sir Henry,” I said, laughing. “Are you off to defeat beasts?”
He gave me a quizzical look. “No. I’m going trout fishing.”
With tremendous effort, I swallowed back laughter and matched his serious tone. “Do you think Miss Ainsley can take in a pair of trousers?”
“She made mine from an old dress! But you’re bigger than me.”
“Not considerably,” I said with a smile. “Is she home? I’m hoping to commission her.”
Henry nodded, squirming in a way that indicated he would far rather be fishing than making conversation with me. On a whim, I pressed one of my coins into his hand. “This is for helping me carry my things to the Mission. Thank you.”
His eyes widened before he pushed it into his pocket. “You’re very welcome, Apprentice Haven. What happened to your hands?” he asked.
I stretched my fingers out and studied my scratched palms. Though the salve had helped, the cuts were still livid pink. “I got scared by a bee and fell.”
His small mouth quirked, but to his immense credit, he did not laugh at me. “Bees won’t hurt you. They’re busy looking for pretty flowers.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Is there anything I should look out for?”
“Water snakes. Wolves in winter. Rapids.” He scrunched his nose thoughtfully, and my heart sank—the list was already too long for my liking. “Hornet nests. Wood spirits.”