Chapter Fifty. Doors that Open … and Close.
Fifty
Doors that Open … and Close.
It’s quite some time before I return to the lodging house, and Ronl sees me back through the rain.
I have been well and truly treated, my forearm cleansed, packed, and rebandaged properly, and I have been strictly informed to return the following day for a reexamination.
Things are quite sore after all the debridement, and whatever Lena put in the wound’s deep, angry core is stinging, but the care I was given warms my lonely heart to such an extent I barely notice the discomfort.
As we arrive at the first of the lodging house’s three entries, Ronl holds things open and then steps inside with me.
“Oh, don’t worry.” Pushing my hooding back so he can see my face, I smile at him as I focus on his chin. “I’m quite safe here.”
He buys the lie with a bow. “You must return on the morrow, or she will send me to gather you again.”
Putting my hand on his arm, I give him a squeeze. “I promise not to make you come get me.”
Ronl bows again and then glances around. He nods at a few people, then says his goodbye to me and ducks back out into the storm.
It’s as the door closes that I hear the singing.
My first thought is of the maid, but that’s not who is vocalizing.
It’s two of the working women. They’re over at one of the round tables by the bar, their legs extended and crossed on empty chairs such that their stockinged ankles show beneath the hems of their skirts, their corsets loosened so that their décolleté is not quite so obvious.
The pair of them are harmonizing with such purity and ease, I’m a bit in awe, their voices so high and lilting, like birds in the spring.
I’m sad that such gifts are squandered for the life they have been forced to live.
Given the morning hour, the pub is comparatively empty, and I glance at the trestle table in the back. Even Top Hat, as I’ve come to think of him, is not in residence. I’m guessing he owns the place. Perhaps the whole town.
The henchmen-like entourage that was with him is also absent.
Behind me, the doors open once again. It’s a man, not dressed in brown felt, and I move out of his way before I find myself in the kind of trouble I can’t easily solve—
He takes one look at me and jumps to the side. He’s clearly drunk—I can smell the alcohol on him, plus his balance is such that it’s as if the floor under him is unreliable—but avoiding me is clearly important enough to cut through his addled brain.
That’s when I notice the other men who are dotted around the tables. They’re not looking at me. At all. Their eyes are locked on their tankards with such studious nature, it’s as if they’re going to be tested by a schoolmarm as to the froth that awaits their numb tongues.
I tug the hooding back into proper place so that my features are fully hidden.
Obviously, Merc’s presence precedes me, and this gives me a depressing shot of confidence: Even after he leaves, I suspect I’ll still be considered his woman.
After last night, I certainly feel as though I am.
Heading over to the stairs, I stop—and then I reroute to the kitchen’s flap door. Some sixth sense spurs me on, and I put my hand on the sticky panels to give them a push.
The cooking facility is bigger than I thought, as dirty as I feared, and empty of staff.
The counters are oriented in a square around a central stone hearth that vents up a chimney that is big as a barn.
Multiple oven entry points circle the heat source, and there are cords of chopped wood stacked by each one.
Courtesy of all this, the dominant smell is not of food, but of fire and ash, and I’m taken back to the settlement.
Countless loaves of bread are cooling on floured racks, hunks of meat of unidentifiable origins are left out to flies, and vats of stew sit on the floor.
Clearly, people survive on the food that’s prepared like this—and I’m one of them.
But my stomach turns at all the grease, grime, and debris.
I’ve never seen so many discarded grain sacks, although the rat population is no doubt grateful for the sloppy pours into the grain grinder—
A door opens from the back, and I hear a squeak.
As I turn, I catch the short-haired maid making a U-turn to duck back into the half door she came out of.
I speak up quick: “Wait, stop.”
She halts immediately, but doesn’t pivot to look at me. As I trace the trembling of her shoulders with my eyes, I reach out my hand, even though there’s no way I can touch her from all the way over here.
“I just wanted to thank you for the food this morning,” I say gently. “And yesterday.”
“You’re welcome.” She speaks to the wall. “If you’ll excuse—”
“Hold on.”
“I have to go—”
“Why.” I stride across the kitchen, rounding the great oven. “Please, don’t leave—”
“I have to—”
It happens so fast. I come up to her, just as she’s trying to go back through the half door, and she stumbles in such a way that the side of her face becomes visible to me.
My breath catches in my lungs. “Crescent moon…”
The maid hides her bruised cheek with both hands. “Please … just let me go.”
“He’s going to kill you.”
As the words jump out of me, she twists around and looks up at me in horror. Instantly, I make a catalogue of the bruising pattern. It’s the exact match to what I saw yesterday. My stomach drops.
“What say you,” she whispers.
“You heard me.” I brush some of her hair back, checking another wound on her temple. “And it’s going to be soon.”
The timing is in that red on her cheek, and the knot on the side of her forehead. It’s also in the rash around her throat, and the cut on the side of her mouth.
My voice is grim. “You need to leave, now.”
“Please, just let me go—”
I put my hands up. “I’m not touching you. But I’m telling you, he’s going to finish this. You need to take your things—”
“I have nothing, and there is nowhere to go—”
“—and I’ll help you.”
The maid stares up at me with such confusion, I nearly meet her eyes again. “Why would you do that?”
We’ve been speaking in hushes, faster and faster, and suddenly crash into a silence.
Now I want to take her hands in my own, as if that will help my message get through, but I fear that if I make contact with her, she’ll spook and run.
“Because I am you.” I have to clear my throat. “I’ve worked as you are, and I’ve been alone, and I’ve been convinced nothing can or will change. Let me help you.”
She looks away from me, and I study her profile.
“You can trust me.”
“You can’t help me.” Her hand lifts to her cheek, the fingertips skipping along the surface of where she’s been hit. “It’s always thus with him. Since he bought me from my parents five years ago.”
I smoother the urge to scream that she was bartered for. “Don’t you want something else? You make the bread, don’t you? And you clean. Wouldn’t you like a position in a safe home or an inn?”
I think of the dead cows outside of my village and of the Fulcrum. Some savior I am, promising things I fear cannot be delivered anywhere in Anathos.
I place my hand over my heart. “I will help you.”
The maid looks over my shoulder toward the massive hearth. “He needs me to work herein.”
“You owe him nothing, and you shouldn’t feel bad for saving yourself—”
“No, he’s not going to kill me because he needs the labor. He’s careful only to correct me so far as I can heal from.”
Lowering my head, cold despair washes through my whole body … as well as a hot fury. “There are others who work here. I beg of you, fate is offering you an exit—”
“He’ll go after my sister.” The maid rubs the back of her neck like it hurts. “She was part of the brokerage, but she was bought by the stable master. He’s a kind man, and he and his wife have treated her well. She needs to stay with them.”
Frowning, I speak of strangers as if I know them. “So they’ll protect her—”
“He tells me that will not matter.” Her hands tangle in front of her chest, as if her heart is skipping beats.
“She’ll be forced to fulfill both obligations.
He says that is the way of twins in the law here.
We are indivisible, and so he will do what he’s done to me …
to my sister.” There’s a pause. “All of it.”
Those hands pull the collar of her undershirt closer together at the base of her neck.
There’s a thump and a rustling in whatever room is beyond, and the maid begins to tremble. “You must go—”
“Let me help you—”
“No.”
She slips back through the portal, and I feel as though I’ve just watched her disappear into her grave. My first and only instinct is to go in after her, but I know if I’m caught here by the cook, there’s no doubt what the consequences will be.
My seeing her death and trying to do something about it … will cause her to be murdered.
I hurry out, hating every step that carries me away. I wish I were as physically strong as Merc. I wish I could wield a broadsword and behead that cruel, bullying ogre.
As I emerge into the pub proper, I can feel a dark energy flowing through me, and instead of being horrified by it, I find myself embracing the wrath and anger.
I don’t know where it comes from, and I don’t care as I round the base of the stairs and start my ascent.
With every step, I imagine a different demise for that bloated drunk who’s terrorizing that innocent girl—and doing more than just beat her.
I’d kill him with my bare hands if I—
My feet come to a halt halfway up, and an odd tunneling of my vision occurs. As my sight dims, my hearing becomes more acute, and I look down.
Through the loosely nailed boards of the steps, I hear the voices, back and forth. The low, slurred deep one, the meek, higher-pitched one. The cook has roused, maybe because of my interruption. Closing my eyes, I pray that I’m wrong about what I’ve been shown.
Even though I know I am not.
Every instinct in me tells me to go down there and put myself between them, bodily. But that will just put her in more danger—
“Get out,” he bellows. “You worthless whore—get the grain!”
There is a scampering and a door closes.
I exhale, even as I know this is no reprieve for her. Just a pause in the destiny that’s coming like a reaper.
From out of a part of me that I don’t recognize, a conviction takes root and begins to grow. I tell myself it’s wrong, on so many levels. When you can’t live with inaction, however, you don’t always get to choose the trail you’re set upon.
As I lift my foot up and place it on the next step, I’m aware that I’ve made a decision, and I spend the rest of the stairs trying to find a way around it. The time is now, however.
Just as I reach the top, the door of the room before me opens—
Merc steps out and is pulling his surcoat back on.
Behind him, in a bed draped in bloodred satin, one of the working women is lying back in an indolent sprawl, her long, flaxen hair waving over the pillows, her naked breast exposed, her painted nails trailing down her cleavage as if she’s recalling what he did to her.
And being very satisfied with their interlude.
As his head comes up, he sees me and freezes. His face shows a brief flash of emotion, but then he puts a mask in place.
He recovers faster than I do. “What in the fates are you doing out of that room.”
Kicking up my chin, I arch my brow as I’ve seen him do countless times. “I’d ask you the same about being in there, but that’s self-explanatory. At least your pants were done up before you opened things.”
As I stride off, I find it incredible—in a bad way—that for someone who’s never felt jealousy before, I take to it with such facility.