11. Penny
Penny
Ifelt a bit better knowing Kit would be along on this latest misadventure, and better still to be free of Cedric’s scrutiny in the smithy for a few days.
I could do no right by the man, a feeling I should have been used to after bumbling my way through life on the farm, but I found myself raw to his sniping.
The constant and very present heat and belches of fire didn’t help.
He didn’t warn me before he pumped the bellows.
We’d loaded up the wagon, crated sheep and all, with pleasant enough company in Rosie and Isla.
Rosie was careful of Kit after his foul mood the last time she’d seen him, but he was quick to apologize.
Isla remained quiet, as usual, an almost ghostly figure in the periphery as we prepared to leave town.
Thoma was there to hitch up the horse and wish us well, and we’d nearly set off when Anders came barreling down the hill toward the city gate.
From the pack on his shoulder and the devilish grin on his face, his intentions were clear.
He boarded the back of the cart, making it bounce under his weight as he squeezed in between the girls across from me and slung his pack on top of the rest. The sheep bleated in its crude wooden crate, protesting the invasion as loudly as I wished I could.
“Anders?” Rosie asked, her face scrunched. “What are you doing here? I thought you were beyond this now?”
“Merrick talked to old Kit up there”—he nodded to where Kit had turned from his perch on the driver’s bench—“and said they decided it was a good idea for us all to go ahead. Not to make special considerations or the like.”
I caught the flicker of irritation on Kit’s face before he turned toward the gates being slowly swung open.
“Fine by me,” Anders carried on. He slung an arm out to each side, catching the women he now sat between and giving them a squeeze. “I prefer this company to Merrick and Klaus any day.”
Both Rosie and Isla cringed, and I tried for a subtly apologetic frown before retrieving my sketchbook from under the roughhewn bench seat. If our journey to Wendwood a few months back was any measure, I would need the distraction from Anders’s endless chatter.
Still looped into Anders’s brawny arm, Rosie squirmed.
“What about your brother, Isla?” She leaned forward to make eye contact with the quieter girl around our unwelcome tagalong. “Shouldn’t he be with us?”
She wanted to say “instead,” I could feel it. Otis wasn’t good company—was dangerous even—but he was a sight better than the burly former lumberman who had tried to burn me alive.
“Ah, um…” Isla paused to consider. “Otis changed his mind on being a Sentinel. He decided to finish his apprenticeship with Harlan instead. He plans to become the new town herbalist, and the Right Hand told him he didn’t need to finish his Oaths to do so.
He’s even moved into Harlan’s spare room, and I never see him anymore.
I’ve been relegated to tending the greenhouse. ”
My attention wandered, and I glanced at the sheep lying down in the too-tight pen.
I didn’t want to draw her that way, all wadded up with her wool freshly shorn.
I liked sheep when they were furry and fat.
Like low-hanging clouds strewn across the meadow, munching grass.
She would make a fine enough reference, though.
“Violette’s taking his place,” Anders was saying in response to a follow-up question I hadn’t quite heard.
A snort slipped out before I could catch it. Merrick was steadily building this place into his own personal kingdom. Placing people he trusted and displacing those he didn’t. That was why he sent Kit underground day after day, removing him from the seat of power he’d so publicly given him.
We’d talked about it a bit the previous night after his bath, for the first time in weeks, and in more detail than his first cursory explanation of his new job.
The bones and the Vessel and the work so near completion.
The timeline Merrick had given was alarmingly short, and he was far more prepared than we were.
Several steps ahead of us all along. Kit and I were both exhausted by the chase.
It felt like every day we were losing ground, or perhaps sliding into the ground, being steadily buried alive.
The wagon broke into motion, bumping down the dirt road leading out of Ashpoint.
I nibbled on my pencil and studied the ewe in her crate.
Her dark eyes glistened on either side of her fuzzy black face, long, slotted pupils staring idly out.
She looked a bit stupid, if I were honest. Oblivious, at least, and that was for the best. She was marked for death, after all.
And what a horrible way to die. Tumbling end over end down into the depths of cold water.
Treading, flailing, and ultimately, succumbing.
I shuddered from a sudden chill.
“Do you think she has a name?” I mused, interrupting the conversation in progress.
Judging by the sideways stares from Anders, Rosie, and Isla, I was thoroughly off topic. Anders’s lips bent in a frown as he tracked my gaze to the penned animal.
“The sheep?” he asked, bewildered.
I nodded, and he scoffed.
“Who names a sheep?”
It would have been Reimond’s job when he was still alive. He’d tended the flock, and I had no doubt he’d given names to every last one. With him gone, I wasn’t sure how such things lived on, only that I wanted them to. I wanted this one to. This simple little life.
“Don’t you suppose their mothers do?” I asked, still bearing the weight of skepticism from the trio across from me. “They must have something to call their babies. Maybe it’s more like a noise.”
“You want to show us what such a noise would sound like?” Anders asked, then guffawed at his own joke.
Rosie squirmed free of his grasp and scooted down the bench so she could glare at him from afar. Her scorn lessened when she looked over at me. “You should give her a name, Pen.”
Isla’s blonde brows bunched. “Won’t that make it harder to kill her?”
“Not for me,” Anders said.
I tapped my pencil on the open sketchbook page. “I think I will give you a name,” I said to the ewe, who merely blinked her wide, dumb eyes. “And I'll draw you in a much happier place than this. Somewhere you'll have all the sweetgrass and clover you can eat.”
Anders chortled to himself, but I ignored it. It was never too early to practice tuning him out.
“What about Delilah?” I asked.
“I think that’s a fine name,” Kit chimed from the driver’s bench.
I glanced aside to find him watching over his shoulder. His smile was soft and eyes as kind as ever. My stomach fluttered.
We rode on. Not in silence—Anders would not allow that—but I was able to ignore him as I drew Delilah in a quiet clearing, surrounded by soft grass and spring blooms. It did make it a bit worse, having named her, having considered a kinder future than the one that awaited her at the end of this journey.
It wasn’t long before I was sick over it, staring at my sketchbook and then at the ignorant creature trapped and awaiting her demise.
“We’ll have to kill her first,” I announced.
This time, my intrusion merited a groan from Anders, who didn’t appreciate being interrupted.
“What are you on about now?” he grumbled.
“Delilah.” I indicated the ewe with the blunt end of my pencil. “Before we pitch her down the well, we’ll need to kill her.”
“Why?” Anders drawled.
I thought again of the black abyss of the well, like a mouth waiting to swallow the sheep down into its watery belly. “I wouldn’t want to die by falling,” I explained. “Or drowning. We’ll have to put her out of her misery so she won’t suffer.” The thought made me shudder.
“I thought you were a farmer,” Anders snarked.
“A farmer, not a butcher,” I retorted, then shuddered. “Barbaric. What does this prove, anyway? Poisoning water. Making people sick. Murdering livestock.”
Isla looked on with wide, blue eyes while Rosie tipped her head. Braids spilled over her shoulder like a curtain of rope.
“Are you more upset about the sick people or the dead sheep?” Rosie asked.
From the driver’s bench, Kit heaved a sigh. “Adversity strengthens community. It makes people come together toward a common cause.”
“Or a common infirmary,” I grumbled and hunched over my sketchbook.
Anders made another rough sound in his throat. “Careful, initiate, you wouldn’t want to appear lacking in faith.”
A scowl carved deep lines in my face, so much I imagined the shadow of them lingered when we stopped for the first night. We made camp, traded off watch, and set out again at first light after not nearly enough sleep.
The next day’s travel was packed full of Anders’s boisterous stories and inappropriate jokes, but otherwise uneventful. We arrived at the unlucky town of Millfield as the sun was almost fully below the horizon.
Millfield looked unassuming enough, a collection of humble stone cottages roofed with thatch gone silver-gray in the twilight.
A few plumes of smoke curled from crooked chimneys, but the streets were still and sparse.
A single horse stood tethered outside the tavern, and I counted only three residents crossing the square.
It was quiet, but not the good kind. Quiet like the hush before a scream.
We couldn’t very well throw a sheep down the public well in broad daylight, which meant we needed to wait for dark.
Stopping in the middle of the road wasn’t an option, either, so we veered off into the tree line—just far enough that the campfire smoke wouldn’t be seen, but close enough to watch the town and wait for the light to fade.
Anders took the lead, hacking thin branches to bits with sweeping swings of his machete to clear a path. Rosie followed behind him, her dark eyes scanning the woods with a quiet competence that made me trust her more than anyone else in our little troop.
Isla trailed a few steps behind, pale as a moonbeam.