Chapter Six. My One and True Friend. #2
“No, they fear you.” Mare flicks her hand through the air in her fashion. “And they don’t care about me. What happens herein is no matter to anyone.”
“I care about you.” I tap on the tin cup with my nail. Tink. Tink. Tink. “More.”
Mare grimaces, and for once, does as she’s told without argument.
And in the crackle of the fire, I return to the moment I was alone with that mercenary in the darkened guest room.
He was so unfazed by shadows that would consume a lesser man.
He also thought I was like Sallae Mae, something to be bought for a short time. For his pleasure.
My face turns hot, but it’s not from shame. I wonder what would have happened if I’d taken his copper and done what he’d ordered me to—and can’t believe where my mind goes. I should be wary of him, and I am. There’s something else for me, though.
Shifting my eyes to the little hearth, I stare into the flames, watching the undulation of the light, the way the flares of heat entwine and arch into each other—
Jumping back to attention, I look over at my dear old friend. She’s lying back against her pillows, the empty cup lolling in her hand, her attention seemingly on something in the middle distance between us.
“Mare?” I take the cup from her and tap on her shoulder. “Mare. Look at me. Mare.”
Just as I’m worried that I’ve given her too much, she turns her head in my direction like she’s coming back from some place in her mind.
“I want you to do something for me, Sorrel.”
Even though I try not to touch people, I take her palm in my own. “Of course. Anything.”
When she goes silent again, I fuss with the blankets with my free hand, as if that will reanimate her—
“Go to those shelves.” Her crooked finger points across the shallow room, steady as a knurled twig on a branch. “The third one from the top.”
Her voice is not the imperious one she uses when she orders me about. I’m not sure what her tone is.
I set the cup down and go over to where she instructs. “Mare?”
“The panel, it is loose. Push where it meets the molding.”
I find the fissure, and the wood yields under pressure to reveal a dark crevice. I look over my shoulder and await instruction.
“Go on,” she says softly. “Take it out.”
“What is ‘it’?”
“Your future.”
Extending my hand into the hole, I think of rats finding shelter from the cold and wet in the leaky walls of the shop. But instead of rabid little teeth, I feel something like velvet. When I go to pull whatever it is out, I’m astonished at how heavy—
The red velvet bag is tied at the top with a golden tassel that captures the firelight. “What’s this?” I repeat.
“Open it.”
With fumbling hands, I do as instructed—
Royal coins spill out into my palm and fall onto the floor, landing in a gleaming, tinkling chorus at my feet.
“Mare…” I breathe.
My elderly companion sits up in a way she hasn’t been able to for a month. “When I was banished, I snuck them out in the skirt of my gown. As I was still legally the wife of a nobleman, they did not search me.”
Turning a coin over in my palm, I am awed. “I’ve never seen even one of these before.”
How beautiful they are. Each royal dnaka is marked with the proud profile of the bearded King on one side and the fierce head of a grylon on the other, and oh, the weight of them. They are dense with value.
“I want you to take it all and leave today.”
When her arching order registers, I jerk my head around. “What? I’m not going anywhere—”
“We are not safe here for much longer. If you sensed something last night—”
“It was only my fear.”
“I do not believe that.” Mare eases back down with a groan. “My time is coming to an end, and I find that the only thing on my mind is you—”
When I go to interrupt, she shuts me up with that imperious raised hand.
“My children were stripped of me when I was banished from the court, and none of them have bothered to try to find me or offer alms for my care and feeding. Therefore, you are the only daughter I have and you are due what worldly possessions I own.”
I blink back tears, for no one has ever claimed me.
As if she senses my emotion, she says more gently, “When I die peacefully in this bed—and we have both agreed you will not intervene—you will have no more ties that bind here in this village. You must go, and go now, so that I do not spend my last days with all this worry.”
I funnel what has stayed in my hand back into the velvet pouch. Then I crouch and pick up the other coins one by one. I inspect them all, turning them over, though they are exactly the same, the grylon and the King. The grylon and the King. The grylon and the—
No, there’s one that’s different. It’s stamped with a younger version of our ruler, and the back side is marked with the image of a crown. No doubt it’s an older one, from when King Rehm first ascended to his throne.
“Sorrel.”
“You can’t call me daughter and expect I’m going to leave you.”
Also, the birthing women like Elly need me. And the bairns. But I don’t speak that out loud even though Mare knows what I do.
And besides, I’m a coward. Though I have flares of strength, they never last, because it’s not my true character. Even with all this gold, I would be useless out there, crippled by my anxiety and lost in the larger dangers of Anathos.
I cannot survive outside the wall of this village.
Mare wields that gnarled finger of hers again, pointing at me now. “There comes a time in everyone’s life that they must choose themselves over others. You have to do this now. It is about survival. Take the coins, buy yourself a horse from Mr. Brownly, and leave.”
“If I use one of these?” I hold the last gold dnaka up. “In this village or anywhere else? I’ll be turned in for stealing. Only members of the court can use these—and anyway, I’m not leaving—”
“You must go.” Mare’s voice lowers even though it’s just the two of us. “And someone who is capable of what you are is hardly defenseless.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”
“Sorrel.”
My name is spoken with such urgency, I nearly meet her eyes. And in the silence that fills the space between us, I feel a crushing fear that thunders my heart.
“I can’t … survive out there alone,” I protest. “I’m not strong enough.”
“So find yourself someone to protect you.” Mare nods at the coins. “And those will help you—the gold can be melted down. Its value is not in the imprint of the King, but the metal itself.”
“But what about you? Who will bring you food and water—”
“My sleep these days is so deep, I have to claw my way back to consciousness, and I have no thirst or hunger. Soon enough, I will drift unto the horizon and rest eternal with my father who loved me and my mother for whom I was a shining joy. I have had my fill of Anathos, and am ready for this. My only worry … is you.”
I slip the final coin back into the pouch, and as the sweet chiming is muffled by the red velvet, I picture the mercenary in the pub, the grip of his broadsword extending up over his heavy shoulder.
“This place leaks.” I look pointedly at the puddle in the corner by the boarded-up front window. “We should use some of these to move you to better accommodations.”
“No. You will take it all and secure your future with what I have left in this material world.”
I put the small fortune back into the hidden nook and re-cover the space with the board. “I’ll return with food and more medicine at nightfall—”
“Sorrel, I have never asked you for a thing, not even when this started between us.”
I return to when I first saw her in the market square a calendar ago.
She was struggling to hold a loaf of bread and a gather of walterberries as she limped along in rags.
Even though it was noontime, I stepped in and helped her, and was surprised to find her living in what all of us assumed was a vacant storefront. I have been coming back ever since.
“You are more important than this village,” she tells me gravely. “What you can do must be preserved—”
“I do nothing.”
Unable to stay still, I get busy with useless effort, unfolding and refolding blankets at the end of the pallet, rearranging the pitiful stack of wood by the fire.
“Come here, child.”
My body answers Mare’s call before my mind can decide whether I want to approach her or not: The next thing I know, I am sitting by her.
“Will you not ever show me your face?” When I make no move to remove my hood, she sighs. “I do not care if you are scarred.”
Mare is the one taking my hand now. Hers is so different from my own, stripped down to its component structures, the bones and ligaments stark under thin skin mottled with age spots.
With her silence, she pleads more loudly than if she’d spoken further, but there are so many reasons I cannot do as she wishes, as she commands.
Chief among them is that I feel as though if I take the coins, I’m hastening her death.
And I don’t know what I’ll do in this village, in this world, without my one true friend.