Chapter 2 Kit
Kit
Two days after our dinner with Reimond and Thoma, a sudden storm kept us in from the forge for the day. The snow wasn’t heavy, but the wind whipped it into a fury, and with Penny’s persistent cough, I worried about him being out in the weather too long.
So, we built a fire and laid a blanket in front of it, then spent the morning curled together while combing through my father’s older journals.
The sooner we found proof that he hadn’t finished his Oaths before he took his first position of leadership, the sooner I could take that information to Levitt.
And if that information allowed Penny and me to move forward with our plan to take down the Bone Men from within and potentially avoid undertaking future Oaths, it was worth the misery of wading through every awful thing my father wrote about me.
After a few hours, Penny fell asleep face down in one of the books.
That wasn’t unusual, as it was difficult to engage him in the research to begin with.
He was easily put off by my father’s detailed descriptions of stripping the flesh from dead bodies and grinding bones to make bricks for Eeus’s Vessel.
More than once, I’d caught him scowling at the text or grumbling under his breath about the “despicable man” who raised me and how I could have possibly come from such stock.
Then he would grab my hand and squeeze it and refuse to let me see whatever passage had caused his disdain.
I always made a note to find it later, curious what he was trying to protect me from.
I’d lived it. I doubted it would surprise me.
Besides the boredom, my housemate had been tired for days.
He passed it off as having been kept up by his cough for the past few nights, but I suspected the exhaustion was a result of the poison.
The hemlock wasn’t helping me with my energy, either.
It turned my stomach and sapped my appetite and left me fighting my own lingering fatigue.
Around lunchtime, a passing mention in one of the journal entries caught my eye and pulled my wandering attention back to the task at hand.
On the heels of my third Oath, I have tasted for the first time of the power Eeus intends for me.
I have taken my place as a Sentinel of the Death Watch, but I have my sights on a seat much higher than this.
As such, things must change, because looking upon my son now, I find myself profoundly disappointed.
My stomach dropped, and I tried to stop reading but couldn’t drag my eyes away.
So much for not being surprised.
Despite all my efforts, he remains too soft and mild.
He lacks the devotion I have tried to instill in him, and while it could be excused before, I cannot have him undermining my authority here.
He asks too much of me, expecting me to take time away from my responsibilities to tend to him.
I intended him to succeed me when the time came, but I fear he will shame me instead.
He should be learning the tenets and studying the collected works in the Ossuary library.
Instead, he dotes on helpless things. The goat kid the soap maker gave the boy last winter—against my wishes—now consumes most of his attention.
He fusses over it constantly and has spoiled what could have been a perfectly good breeding doe so she’s as useless as he is.
I’ve a plan to fix that shortcoming, at least.
Nausea that had nothing to do with the hemlock churned in my gut as a vivid memory seared across my mind.
There was snow on the ground that day too, but significantly more than now.
It was a few days after my eighth birthday, and I’d spent the afternoon building snowmen with Levitt and Violette behind the apothecary.
It was getting dark by the time I pushed into the house, red-faced with my nose running and my fingers numb inside my damp wool mittens.
When I stopped inside the door to strip out of my sodden outerwear, the smell of roast meat made my stomach growl.
I was back later than I’d been told to be, so I knew my father would be upset if I took the time to feed the goat before sitting down with him to dinner. It would have to wait until after, but that would give me a chance to make her a warm mash to help combat the evening chill.
My father was seated at the table when I stepped into the kitchen, and I withered under his glare. The joy of the day bled away in an instant.
“You’re late,” he growled. “Sit down and eat before it gets any colder.”
I crept up into the chair opposite him and poked at the stew with my spoon.
It was thick, packed full of cubed meat and vegetables, and my mouth watered at the smells of sage and thyme steeped in the broth.
After several mouthfuls, I finally found the courage to speak in the face of my father’s scornful expression.
“I want to make a mash for Clover after supper.” My voice was quiet in the small room. “I did chores for Harlan yesterday, and he gave me some coin, so I bought grain and apples for her. For a treat since it’s so cold.”
The ghost of a smile crossed my father’s face, and I gave a reflexive smile of my own.
He waved a hand. “That won’t be necessary.”
My smile faded. He’d refused to do anything to help with Clover’s care since the soap maker brought her to me the year before, so the thought of him having fed her when I was late was almost laughable.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “I haven’t fed her yet tonight. Did you?”
He scoffed. That hint of a smile returned, and it wasn’t kind.
“Eat your food, boy. I’ll hear no more about that damned goat.”
We passed the remainder of the meal in silence. After I was finished and excused, I washed my dishes and went for a pot to heat the water to make Clover’s mash.
“Leave it,” my father snapped from his seat at the table. “I won't let you waste grain and apples on an animal. It’s bad enough to have to provide hay.”
“But I bought it myself. You didn’t—”
He pounded his fist on the table. “I said no!”
I shrank back, and my voice shrank with me. “Can I at least give her one of the apples?”
When he rose from his chair, I’d have melted into the floorboards if I could have.
“If I have to tell you ‘no’ one more time—”
“Yes, Father,” I broke in, unable to hide a flinch when he reached for my arm and yanked me close. His fingers dug in.
“And don’t interrupt me again, boy.”
He flung me toward the hall, and I scurried for the front door before he could make good on any of his unspoken threats.
I stuffed my feet into my boots, swung my damp cloak around my shoulders, and ducked outside and around to the small pen behind the house.
My whole body shook as I opened the hay bin and scooped up an armful to drop into the manger inside the fence.
“Supper, Clover.” I hopped over the fence and came around to the front of the three-sided shelter where she slept. “Sorry it’s not the mash I promised…”
My gaze settled on the pile of bedding inside the shelter, and my stomach lurched when I realized what was sitting there. Clover was gone, or at least most of her. All that remained was her severed head, eyes open and clouded over with ice, set atop a mound of bloodied straw.
She’d died alone, this animal I had raised almost from birth, who listened to all my problems and my dismay at the changes in my father over the past year, and all the things no eight-year-old should have to witness or deal with.
I’d sought comfort from her time and again, but I hadn’t been here to comfort her in return.
I wondered if she’d been scared, if she’d looked for me, if she thought I’d abandoned her, or if she knew how much I’d loved her to the very end.
Tears blurred my vision as I stumbled out of the pen and back toward the house in a horrified daze.
I couldn’t understand how this had happened.
The fence was unbroken, and there was no sign of an animal attack.
With the wall, there was little chance of a predator finding its way into Ashpoint anyway.
Something—or someone—else had done this.
I tracked snow inside as I staggered into the kitchen and leaned heavily against the door frame. My father sat in his chair at the table, watching me with a sneer of disgust as I fought against a sob to speak.
“What happened to Clover?”
He gestured to the pot of stew on the stove. “Where do you think I got the meat for supper?”
Fierce heaves dropped me to my knees. It took only seconds to rid my stomach of every scrap of that stew all over the kitchen floor. I gasped for breaths between gags and sobs until there was nothing left in me.
A bucket clattered to the floor beside me followed by an old rag. When I finally pried my eyes open, my father loomed over me looking more furious than I’d ever seen him.
“You will not waste food in this house,” he growled. “Clean this mess, and then you’ll eat another bowl.”
I hiccupped a sob. “Please, no…”
He crouched so his face was level with mine. “You will eat what I make, and you will not complain.”
“She was my friend—”
“She was livestock. You ruined her with your coddling, and she wasn’t worth a damn for anything but eating.” He pushed the bucket closer. “Clean. Now.”
This was life, and I was still trying to be a good boy. So I did what I was told.
For weeks afterwards, he cooked up another cut of goat meat each day and berated me for not eating it, then sent me to bed without supper. I went entire days without eating because I couldn’t trust that he wasn’t trying to feed me my friend.
When I told the Yost twins what happened, Vi laughed and told me I was being a baby. But when she was gone, Levitt hugged me and let me cry until I’d worn myself out. He found ways to sneak me food every time he saw me after that.