Chapter 2
The start of a new day was often reserved for the dead in the impoverished district.
It seemed as if even the crisp morning air that nipped at Anelize’s cheeks knew it as well, carrying nothing but frigid whispers in the wind and the distant wails of those who discovered they’d lost another soul to the malady.
Or the sharp fangs of winter sinking into the flesh of those who never sought shelter in time.
She walked the streets of the port overflowing with folk already having poured out of their homes and into the city.
The sound of her footsteps was softened by the thick layers of snow that gathered overnight.
Shades of periwinkle and thulian kissed the skies as dawn arrived, the silent greeting of the sun that would soon diminish into a dull white once the graying clouds spread.
Venturing onto the streets in the middle of Elvir’s sharpest, most unforgiving, winter was certainly not for the weak, no matter how hardened its people had become, how lacking in life they were with their tired eyes and malnourished faces that walked past her.
The mistrust that poured off all of them in waves that she’d grown accustomed to seeing over the past twenty years.
Beggars who were ignored by passersby sat along the walls of buildings, wrapped in ratty cloaks, their tin cups barren of a single ruen.
Orphans ran along the streets to pester the men and women who passed by them, asking for money in their sweet, desperate voices like a flock of birds chittering away.
Begging for an ounce of food that could be spared. Anything to survive another day.
They would be given none. Anelize knew exactly what it meant to grow hungry as a child, the hollow ache that started in her stomach that, at times, she still felt years later.
A maddening cycle that felt as though it would never end.
The juxtaposition between the orphans around her and the dying city they found themselves in was not lost on her.
Eventually, the wails of a woman grew louder as Anelize reached the cusp of a group of half-timbered homes tightly situated together, practically built on top of each other and slightly slanting as if at any moment they would crumble.
A group of people all dressed in ebony threads walked down the street in a small procession.
A woman with tears streaming down her cheeks, her face twisted in agony as she clutched what looked to be a man’s bloodied coat, was guided by two other women standing on either side of her.
Their faces covered by black lace veils.
A sign of mourning to all who passed as they made their way down the main road toward the Old Church seated atop the meandering hills.
Anelize came to a stop, watching as they walked past, their loss felt as surely as the chill in the air.
When the malady took root, if the victim was fortunate, it would not steal them away until well into a fortnight.
Anelize had deduced over her keen studies of the ailment that the average victim could survive for that long if they were well taken care of by their families.
If they were fortunate enough to have them at all.
Regardless, once the wandering commenced, there was little anyone could do.
Less so when the victims ventured into the forest. Lost to the impenetrable haze lurking amongst the trees.
When that occurred, the ones who remained to mourn the loss often had nothing to bury, nothing to bid their farewells.
Only the memory of decay and rot, and hollow eyes.
When the barking commands of the Watchmen filtered from another street, she turned the opposite direction while the rest of the onlookers quickly dispersed.
She kept to the docks, staying away from the trouble that followed wherever the king’s men went, questioning any they suspected of treason, the slightest sight of wicked insurrection.
Anelize had no time for such useless interruptions when she already had a full day laid out before her. Yarrow’s Apothecary & Remedies being the only source of medical treatment made available for the impoverished port district meant Anelize had very little time to do much of anything else.
Her aunt merely saw it as a boon, good for business.
Good for the woman who looked forward to filling her coffers with a hungry eye, choosing to forget that her source of income came from the misfortunes brought to another’s doorstep.
Not that Magda did any of the work to earn it, with little to no interest in learning the responsibilities of an apothecary.
Which was precisely why Anelize was up at dawn, and not her beloved aunt.
She slipped on a pair of worn knit gloves Enid had made for her last winter with the bit of yarn she’d been able to buy as Anelize entered the market square.
She kept a keen eye over the merchants’ stalls and vendors’ carts, eager to make any earnings they could with what little they had to offer.
Food and medicine were often scarce in these parts, leaving very few options to choose from by those who could hardly afford to spend so much as a single ruen.
Regardless, they all made do one way or another.
The bakery in the square was full when she arrived to deliver a set of tonics to the baker and his wife, who had contracted a pestering cold that started to spread in the district.
Any hopes she’d had to trade them for a loaf of bread wilted when she saw how sickly they were, frantically trying to keep the frenzied patrons within the bakery at bay.
Their shelves already barren. It was a high probability that they’d barely had enough bread to sell to a handful of people.
As she turned down a street, she stopped when she noticed a man dressed in a wool coat and thick fur cu?m? atop his head, grumbling up at a wall, his ruddy face filled with contempt as he wrung a rag from a bucket on the ground, the water sloshing with ice forming over the surface.
“Damn flagrant criminals, the lot of them,” he said as she walked past him while he began scrubbing the wall.
She stole a glance at the red dye that had been used to mark the wall with spiraling symbols and whorls that formed a strange rounded four-pointed star, the corners being wiped away in a messy streak.
Nothing more than a taunting mark, a sign of retaliation for all to see.
It would only serve to create more hatred rather than anything truly productive.
It certainly wouldn’t dissuade the king from hunting down the very one’s he’d declared responsible for the malady in the first place.
If not the Watchmen, then the Vedrans, she thought with a shake of her head as she continued moving through the city.
Her work carried on throughout the morning the same as it often did, delivering tonics and remedies to patrons who had placed their orders from the shop.
Anelize collected as many payments as she could, though she knew her luck was bound to run out eventually.
When a handful of the shop’s most loyal patrons could hardly pay half the lofty sum Magda demanded, seemingly increasing the prices with each passing season, Anelize had made the unfortunate…
mistake of forgetting to collect ruens at all.
Magda wouldn’t be pleased if she caught on to Anelize’s so-called frequent mistakes.
Though, so long as she paid the debts owed to her aunt, Anelize hardly thought it held much significance in the end.
In a way, she must have gotten the horribly martyrized habit from her father, which is why she was left paying off his debts in the first place.
He never liked preying on the weak, just as he’d taught his daughters to never do so either. It was, unfortunately, not a trait her aunt had inherited from him over the years.
Anelize had often questioned the sort of luck she was dealt as a child.
To be reduced to laboring day in and day out, to avoid the wrath of a woman who held her and her sister’s lives in the palm of her hand.
Even now, at twenty-six name days, Anelize couldn’t help but feel an invisible noose tightening around her neck. Her aunt, ever the eager hangman.
By midday, she had traveled to the outskirts of the district. Following the narrow-graveled path that led to the Old Church which sat proudly over the tallest hill where she could hear the distant toll of the bell.
As she reached the top of the hill, she looked out toward the Abanos Sea where the black waves no longer danced as one but sat as frozen arches as if carved from black tourmaline.
Ships and long boats permanently confined within their icy depths.
She had never once heard the hiss and crash in the distance, and Anelize wondered if she ever would.
The Abanos had frozen long ago during the War of Kings, effectively saving Elvir from being invaded, while simultaneously sealing them all away from the world beyond, including the rest of Madic.
Providing them with no escape whatsoever while forsaking those beyond the city.
Yet another reason so many had come to despise the Vedrans and their wicked ways.
The catalysts for the kingdom’s ruination.
The rounded domes of the church and the stone walls surrounding the grounds of the monastery made the small structure appear mountainous as she grew closer.
A looming structure that dissuaded many from venturing too close.
Unless, of course, they wished to grow one step closer to the forest that stretched far beyond the eye could see.