Chapter Two
I stare dumbly at Rula. ‘Hemlock?’ I repeat aloud. She wants me to steal hemlock?
Rula nods. ‘Or another poison that works the same. Quick. Untraceable. No chance of recovery. I don’t want a well-meaning healer interceding.’
I baulk, shaking my head in disbelief. ‘That’s not the type of plant I just have on hand,’ I reply. Sure, I have plants growing at home that could cause harm – knock someone out or cause tummy aches and fevers – but nothing deadly. ‘Surely you have connections you could trade with?’
Rula sniffs at my remark. ‘Time is of the essence. I’m sure they grow it in the Goddess’s Garden. You’ll just have to take a trip there tonight. Of course, if you’re not the right person for the job …’
She lets the unspoken threat linger. If I’m not the right person for the job, then she’s not going to help Kay. Instead, my sister will be forced to take to the streets, selling her body for coin.
I’ve been in the Goddess’s Garden before, and I certainly know herbs well. The garden isn’t even that heavily guarded. After all, who would dare steal from the priestesses?
Apparently me, that’s who. And if it were any other herb, I wouldn’t hesitate. But hemlock? Poison?
And I don’t need to ask how Rula intends to use it. She’s a nefarious person asking for a nefarious plant. If I give it to her, someone will die.
I swallow.
But Kay won’t.
Kay will get a job, an income, a livelihood. Sanity. Would I damn my soul for her? In a heartbeat.
So stealing a couple of herbs from the Goddess’s Garden? I can do that. Of course I can. Even hemlock.
Still, Rula will only believe in the value of something if it’s hard-won, so I give the protest she’s expecting.
‘I don’t know if I can do that,’ I say to her. ‘Not that quickly. Not without preparation.’
‘You can, or Kay doesn’t get that job.’
I continue my protestations. ‘It would mean stealing from Etta, the Goddess of Life.’
Rula shrugs. ‘Exactly. She doesn’t need it. Hemlock is a herb for Mortidem.’ She cackles a little, amused by her own joke.
What Rula doesn’t know is that my mother was raised by one of the priestesses of Etta. Dinah is practically a grandmother to us, and there have been several times since my father died that I don’t think we’d have survived without her perfectly timed visits, which always included a basket of food.
I consider – just for a moment – asking Dinah outright for the plant but immediately dismiss the notion. She’d say no. I know she would.
Dinah would have no part in giving me a poison that kills quickly without a trace.
‘Who do you want to use it on?’ I ask, because even with Kay at the heart of my thoughts, it matters. It matters who Rula will kill.
‘Some people have wronged me. Badly,’ she says finally.
‘I have enemies. People who think that my falling down would allow them to rise. But the hemlock isn’t for my competitors.
’ She offers me a humourless smile that fades almost immediately.
‘There were three girls, not much older than Kay; they lost their lives to this bastard.’
‘Which three girls?’ I ask, a churning sense of dread filling me.
‘Three of my best: Stella, Bryony, and Talia.’
A lump fills my throat. Talia. Kay’s only got a handful of friends in the slums, and Talia was one of them.
To lose a friend – and to lose them like that – it’ll break her.
My resolve steels. The last thing she needs is to find out the grim truth behind Talia’s death.
I’ll have to think of something else to tell her.
‘Why not go to the guards?’ I ask, though I know the answer before the words have finished leaving my lips.
‘He’s a powerful man. The guards will do nothing, and I want him dead,’ she says fiercely, eyes cold as a steel dagger. ‘Dead at my hands.’
She’s right; the guards will do nothing. They give even less of a shit about us than the king does, if that’s possible. The only time they ever seem to remember that the slums exist is when they come out here with some new order or rules we have to follow.
Or when we try to move our way through to the inner rings. Then they notice us.
Which, I realise, is another issue.
Etta’s temple is in Wrohelm’s third ring, meaning I would have to make my way through three checkpoints. Maybe I could get into the fifth and fourth rings easily enough, but the third … that would require planning. And Rula isn’t giving me any time.
‘Why tonight?’ I ask. ‘I need time to prepare, to plan.’
‘He’s from Galreck, and he travels back tomorrow.
It is now or never. And it must not be never, Rose, or I’ll see your sister on her back,’ she threatens, only for her expression to soften, just a little, just around the eyes.
‘My girls did nothing wrong,’ Rula says.
‘He killed them merely because he could. Plucked them from the slums because they were expendable and snuffed them out like they were nothing. Well, they’re not nothing, not to me.
They were my girls, and they were under my protection.
I failed them, and I’ll see the life leave his eyes for it. Personally.’
Her gaze has drifted away from me, and when it meets mine again, she grimaces. ‘I can’t fight him. He’s too big. And he’s got good magic.’
‘What kind?’
‘Fire wielder. Not as good as your fancy folk up in the High Hold, but strong enough to have me burning before I can get a knife into him. But he can never resist a drink. So a drink with a hint of hemlock … well, that would do the trick nicely.’
A murderer. Can I be partly responsible for the death of such a man? If it will save the lives of more innocent girls, then I know my answer. Still, I need the agreement to be ironclad. ‘If I do this – if I get you the hemlock or some other poison – Kay gets the job?’
She nods. ‘It’s as good as done.’
‘Deal,’ I reply, handing her the tonics.
‘I’ll give you double payment for these vials,’ she says. ‘Just so I know we’re good.’
So I get the poison for her, more like, but I take the money.
‘Remember, it has to be tonight.’
I nod. It’s not yet mid-morning, and I need to wait for the full cover of darkness, which doesn’t leave much, if any, room for mistakes.
‘I’ll get it to you before midnight,’ I promise before I walk away, slipping into the crowd, my mind whirring as I weave back through the stalls.
Stealing poison from the priestesses will be a new low, but the rewards will be worth it. A job for Kay. And Rula will no doubt owe me, too, though she didn’t specifically say as much. Still, maybe she’ll owe me just enough to keep Tella off my back?
The extra money from the vials was definitely an unexpected bonus. It’s enough for me to buy some flour and milk, but rather than taking my unexpected spoils home to eat, I first head out beyond the slums.
Outside the ramshackle houses propped at the edge of the sixth ring of Wrohelm are a few sparse groves of spruce trees and, for those brave enough and dumb enough to risk a climb, fresh eggs.
Disappointment rises as I climb not one but three trees, only to find each nest is already empty. But I’m not willing to give up without a fight, and it’s not like I’ve got anywhere else to be. Not until nightfall anyway.
With my determination steeled, I continue deeper into the grove, and my pulse spikes as I spot another nest. It’s hard to tell from down here, but something makes me think it’s full.
Seriously full. My hope reignites, and I once again set the milk and flour down, then start to climb, hauling myself up, scrambling and finding purchase on even the smallest holds.
Climbing sets free a part of my soul that the High Hold didn’t manage to strip, my body inching further and further away from the life to which I am currently tethered, allowing me to lose myself in the view that stretches around me.
I swing upwards, higher and higher. Several of the thinning branches bow, but they don’t break under my meagre weight. An upside to being painfully thin.
Long gone are the days of muscles and strength, and yet as an unfamiliar ache pulls at my cheeks, I realise I’m smiling.
I’ve undoubtedly lost some of my fighting skills, and I’m sure that if I were to spar again, my footwork would be worse than when I was nine years old, but I’m lean and light, and the perfect composition for tasks like this.
In this, at least, I can excel.
When I pull myself level with the nest, I beam. Not just one egg or two, but a whole cluster. Seven. Seven!
‘Sorry, bird,’ I say as I take them one by one and slip them into the pockets where the vials were resting earlier.
Seven eggs. That’s almost the most I’ve ever found in one go.
It won’t just be pancakes – it’ll be boiled eggs, too.
My stomach roars at the thought of it. Of being full.
I wonder, even though I know it is a fantasy, if I could possibly bake a cake.
The last time I had something sweet, Mother was still alive, and we were still living in the fifth ring. We had no magic, but we had each other.
Well, as much as Father remained after Florian’s death.
In the beginning, Father’s drinking was to blunt the pain, but in the end, he had to drink to survive. He’d checked out of our lives long before his death, and it was hard to now remember the man he was before our ruination.
Shaking myself back into the moment, I continue back down to the ground and force myself to think of happier things. Of pancakes. I won’t let the past steal today’s wins from me.
With my new haul, I move even more carefully than I did when I had the vials in my pockets. Even a slight jostle could break siskin eggs, so I slow my steps, trying to weave carefully through the press of unwashed bodies.
It almost works.
I’m in the alley that leads home when a small child runs smack into me.
‘Sorry!’ she says, wide-eyed. Simultaneously, I hear the crack in my pocket and feel the sudden dampness that seeps through to my skin.
‘Fuck,’ I mutter to myself, only to see that the child is still there. She is looking up at me, terror on her face, like I’m going to do more than just swear at her.
‘It’s fine,’ I say as I sigh. ‘Don’t worry.’
She flashes me a relieved smile before darting towards the market.
My heart sinks, and not just because of the lost eggs, though I don’t want to think of how many she broke.
She was so emaciated that it was impossible to say how old the girl was.
Maybe six, seven? I bet all she’s ever known is this life. This poverty. This starvation.
Though maybe that’s easier. Easier than knowing there’s a whole different world out there, where people have so much food they don’t even bother finishing what’s on their plates.
‘Guess what?’ I say as I open the piece of metal that’s our door and then slide it back into place once I’m inside.
Kay jumps up from where she’s sitting by the fire.
I’ve told her a couple of times that we really shouldn’t waste decent firewood until it’s cold enough that our breath fogs, and I can’t decide whether she keeps forgetting …
or just doesn’t care about the risk of inhaling wood smoke all day.
But I guess it’s not as bad as dying from the cold.
‘What? Did Rula find me a job?’ she asks, her eyes wide with anticipation.
I open my mouth, momentarily considering whether I should tell her that maybe … maybe there’s a chance she’ll have a job by the end of the week.
But I don’t want to get her hopes up. Hope’s almost as big a killer as cold out here. It rots the mind the way the damp rots the wood of our bed.
‘She’s looking into it,’ I tell her, feeling that’s a good compromise. After all, I’m not going to tell her the whole truth.
She can’t know about the hemlock. Not ever.
Kay would never be on board with me breaking into the Goddess’s Garden, let alone being complicit in a murder. The less she knows, the better.
‘I got eggs,’ I say triumphantly, reaching into my pocket.
My hand finds the sticky broken shell first and Kay’s face falls in disappointment, though she makes a poor attempt to hide it.
‘Don’t worry, that’s not it,’ I reassure her hastily. ‘I got others. In fact—’ I pull out the first one with a sense of relief. By the third one, she’s grinning, and by the fourth, her hand is covering her mouth in shock.
I reach back into my pocket, ready to retrieve the last two, but feel only one.
‘Everything okay?’ she asks.
I dig deeper. The lining of this coat has so many holes it could easily have fallen through. But there’s nothing. Just the one egg.
‘The little kid,’ I realise. Of course. Running into me wasn’t an accident. And that was why she looked so scared. She thought I’d figured out what she’d done, realised that she’d stolen from me.
A flicker of anger flares to life, only to fade almost instantly. The little girl didn’t steal it for fun. She did it because she was starving. Because she needed to eat. I get that. And it’s not like five eggs isn’t a decent haul anyway.
‘I can do an omelette!’ Kay says, excited. ‘We could use some herbs and spices and maybe even—oh.’ Her face falls a little, and I’d do anything to bring her smile back.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘I was just thinking that if we had some flour and some milk, we’d be able to make some pancakes.’ She tries to force a smile.
‘Flour and milk like this, you mean?’ I grin, pulling the bottles out of my coat.
Before I can even register what’s happened, she’s jumped up and wrapped her arms around me so tightly I can barely breathe.
Pancakes. I can hardly believe this boon we’ve been gifted. I murmur my thanks to the Goddess Etta.
This day is looking up, even if it is going to end with perfidy and poison.