20. Penny
Penny
C ool air wicked the sweat off my forehead as I hurried out of the Right Hand’s chambers. I led Kit for a change, putting distance between us as we traversed the short hallway, then started down the first flight of stairs.
My heart had not stopped thundering through the entire meeting with the Right Hand. Even now, it pulsed in my ears so loudly that I barely heard the gruff shout from behind me.
“Penwell!”
I stopped, recognizing the tone and the use of a name I’d been informed was much too distinguished for me.
Turning, I watched Merrick storm down the steps toward us.
His ceremonial robe fluttered behind him, and a bone necklace rattled around his neck.
He looked absurd with his sleeves belled out and his high collar so stiff and tight it must have been strangling.
Despite his fanciful clothing, his expression was full of the same fury as when he caught me sketching while I was meant to be tilling, or the time I rode our plow horse in a rainstorm and brought her back missing a shoe.
Merrick blew past Kit, who had stopped on the stairs between us and now watched, tense and poised to step in, as my brother closed the gap to me. I stayed in place, but Merrick grabbed my wrist anyway as if wanting to ensure I couldn’t escape.
“Penwell,” he hissed, then threw a sneer at Kit before turning back to me. “I hope you have a better explanation for your presence here than the one I just heard.”
My skin prickled at his touch, and I thought to pull away. But I recalled what Kit had said about arrogance and tried a different tack. “Father is dead.” I met my brother’s gaze evenly. “That was true enough.”
“Worshipping Eeus, though. You?” He scoffed. “You couldn’t be bothered to muck out horse stalls and scoop chicken shit. What care could you have for a higher power?”
Kit closed in at Merrick’s back, standing on the step above us looking severe with his dark clothes and stormy expression. “If his reason is good enough for the Right Hand, it will have to be good enough for you,” he said.
Merrick released me and looked Kit up and down with no small amount of disdain.
“The Right Hand and I rarely see eye to eye,” he said, his jaw tight.
“I have as much doubt about Penwell’s reason for joining our order as I do about how well his efforts will reflect on you.
You may come to regret having his name associated with yours.
” Merrick pinned me with a look of disgust as he added, “I certainly have.”
It stunned me. More than that, it hurt, like clawing open a deep wound and starting it bleeding again.
Merrick was a driven man. An intolerant man. A cruel man. And, while I floundered for a reply, one burst out of me of its own accord.
“You lied!” My exclamation resonated in the cavernous stairwell. “About everything. You stole Father’s body and brought it here. You let me believe it was my fault?—”
“Penny…” Kit’s eyes went wide in horror.
This was nothing we rehearsed. If anything, it was the opposite.
It took a moment to shake the knowledge that I was disappointing him. I risked us both with my recklessness, but anger and grief had me in a chokehold, and they wouldn’t relent until they’d wrung everything out.
“He’s gone, isn’t he?” I asked Merrick, clenching my fists in an attempt to look angry and not like I was desperately clinging to a hope I should have given up weeks ago. “I’m too late.”
Tears threatened, but I swallowed them while my brother glowered at me, wholly unmoved.
“Of course he’s gone,” Merrick replied. “Was that the reason you came? Did he let you believe…?” His gaze flicked over to Kit, who remained paralyzed with shock.
“You knew better than that, Kitingor. ” Merrick sneered.
“And you ought to be ashamed. Taking advantage of a simpleton to buy your way into our midst.”
I bristled. “Kit didn’t take advantage of me! I came of my own accord.”
I had come farther and risked more than I thought possible. Since the night before, I’d been grappling with the likelihood that it had all been for naught. Now that I was certain my efforts were in vain, the weight of that knowledge was crushing.
“I only wanted to say goodbye,” I said without conviction. “One last time.”
Merrick cocked his head, and his ceremonial necklace rattled. “What do your mother and sister think of all this? That you would abandon them in their time of need to chase after a dead man’s bones?”
Always my mother. My sister. Never his. He insisted on being set apart, as though we weren’t his family at all.
I backpedaled till I hit the wall, then pressed against it as though pinned there. “I was only to be gone a little while…”
Looming overhead, Merrick appeared even more severe. Shadows stained his features. “I think you’ve been gone long enough,” he said, then pointed down the stairs to the unseen exit. “Go home, Penwell. You don’t belong here.”
He’d told me the same thing about my own home.
Made me believe I had no place anywhere .
I was lazy, strange, and stupid. I didn’t fit in at Ashpoint either, among people who worshipped a dark god while I feared his curse.
That was why Kit had been reluctant to bring me and so ready to shoo me away the moment an opportunity presented itself.
Catching Kit’s dark eyes, I found them pinched in concentration. I expected him to agree with my brother, but instead he spoke up sharply.
“Gods, you really are an insufferable ass. Have you nothing better to do than prey on those you view as weaker than yourself?”
He looked so strong and brave that I wished I could duck behind him rather than cower against the wall, but I stayed put as he continued.
“Last I knew, the Shroud Warden was a position of honor, not one of vindictive tyranny. You must think very little of yourself to gain so much from making others feel small.”
Merrick’s expression ran the gamut from seething anger to cold placidity before he responded in a low voice. “Well done, Penwell.” He looked at me with eyes so much like my own. “You’ve found someone with as little sense as you have.”
I sucked my lip between my teeth and bit down, doing what I could to combat the sob that swelled from my chest. It only made him angrier when I cried, and to do so now with Kit looking on would shame me so badly I wouldn’t be able to bear it.
Merrick spun from me to Kit and ascended the step between them so they were chest to chest. “You should know the farm isn’t his to give.
” He stabbed a finger at me. “I pledged it long ago, along with my unfailing loyalty to Eeus. Some of us are not swayed from our convictions by petty disagreements with our fathers.”
Kit and Merrick stood nearly eye to eye, but Kit was broader, and the way his arms flexed against the sleeves of his shirt spoke of a physical prowess my brother couldn’t hope to match.
“There was nothing petty about my father slaughtering unwilling people to bend Eeus to his will,” Kit replied. “It was depraved. Damned. I wanted no part of it.”
The conversation had taken a turn toward things I didn’t understand. I stared at the two men posturing on the step above me, reluctant to intervene even if the mess we were in was of my own making.
When Merrick snorted and tipped his head toward me, I summoned the courage to speak again.
“F-Father left the farm to me,” I stammered. “He passed you over.”
Perhaps he was wiser than I knew.
“It was always meant to be mine,” Merrick snapped.
“And it still will be. I hardly intend to let you keep me from my birthright. In fact, perhaps you should stay. Undergo the Oaths. Let Eeus decide whether you’re worthy.
I predict it’s only a matter of time before your stupidity leads you both to ruin. ”
He spun, his robes billowing out behind him, and started back up the stairs. Kit and I remained where he left us as the echo of his footsteps faded.
The tears I’d held back flowed freely now, washing my cheeks and making my nose run.
I sniffed and wiped my sleeve across my face, then turned aside so Kit couldn’t see.
I was ready to get out of this place and back to the safety of his little cottage and the room where I could be alone with my thoughts.
In the midst of my turmoil, Kit’s fingers grazed my back. “Are you all right?”
“Merrick told me to go home,” I said, mentally cursing the tremor in my voice. “But if I leave, what stops him from showing up at the farm next harvest and taking his share? Or taking everything since he thinks it’s all his, anyway?”
Kit gripped my shoulder then turned me around. I stayed hunched, hiding my pain and sorrow until he reached out and wiped his thumb across my cheekbone, catching an errant tear. The gesture surprised me—him, too, judging by the way he pulled back and tucked his hands in his pockets.
“I won’t let that happen,” he murmured.
I shook my head. “But how? You said yourself he’s powerful. You would have to be more powerful than him.”
“Or be friends with someone who is.”
Before I could question him further, he led me away, down the stairs and out of the building and into the harsh light of day.
On the way back through town, my mind wandered from Levitt’s questions and the coached answers I’d given, to Merrick’s spiteful words in the stairwell, to the way Kit’s fingers had brushed my cheek and how his hand might feel clasped in mine.
That last idea lingered as we walked in stride, becoming an urge I barely defeated before we passed Rosie’s bakery stand. Despite wanting to get home, when she caught sight of me and waved cheerfully, I found myself desperate for a distraction.
I snagged Kit’s sleeve to pull him to a stop in front of the booth as I returned Rosie’s wave. He barely seemed to register what was happening, lost to his own thoughts.
“Kit, this is Rosie.” I gestured to them each in turn. “She’s another new initiate. She grew up here.” I tried to gain Kit’s attention by bumping my shoulder into his. “Like you.”