11. Penny
Penny
M other’s list took the rest of the day. I felt better leaving her and Sayla knowing I wouldn’t also be leaving work outstanding for untold days or weeks. It came as equal relief that Merrick would have no cause to disparage me in my absence, though he would find one regardless.
Kit’s knowledge of farm life proved extensive, as did his list of talents.
He seemed to know a bit about everything and accomplished tasks with ease.
I was used to following the lead of those more adept than me, but it came as a blow to my ego that the more adept party this time was someone I had begged help from already.
To need his aid with something that should have been my expertise grated on me.
My wounded pride recovered in the mid-afternoon when I was too distracted by the spectacle of Kit chopping a fallen tree into firewood to be mad about anything at all.
By the time he finished splitting the logs I was meant to stack, I had nearly forgotten every one of my sister’s taunting comments about Kit being my suitor, absurd cow dowries, and Dawson Hilliard.
The wrestling match turned failed kiss happened five years ago, but had proven the kind of mistake bound to follow me forever.
Kit leaned the axe against the weathered old stump we used for chopping, then mopped his forehead with his kerchief.
Sweat pasted his shirt to his torso and muscular arms, and his cheeks were flushed from exertion.
He wandered over to where I sat cross-legged beside a pail of drinking water.
As he approached, I dipped a tin cup into the pail to fill it and held it out for him.
He took the drink and guzzled it down, then turned and sat beside me. Crossing his hands behind his head, he laid back and let out a long breath.
“How long has this property been in your family?” he asked.
I glanced over at him, trying to focus on the question but only seeing the sharp angle of his jaw and the hollow between his collarbones where his skin glistened.
“It was my father’s, and his father’s… Perhaps his father’s, as well?” Kit’s brow furrowed, and I shrugged. “Some years. I’m sure he told me, but…”
My family’s biggest point of pride had never been mine.
The farm was my home, but as I grew, it became less a place and more of a living thing.
A mouth to be fed, a crushing obligation.
I’d believed, as the second son, that the responsibility for securing the Oliver family legacy would pass me over.
Then Father surprised us all by changing the plan.
“He should have left it to Merrick instead,” I confessed. “It was his birthright; he prepared for it all his life.”
“If he was to inherit the farm, then why did he join the militia?”
“I’m not sure. He rarely bothers to explain himself to me.
” But I’d gathered enough from listening to my parents argue and my mother cry to know it had something to do with the fire.
Merrick was nineteen when it happened, very much a man, and far less forgiving of my near-fatal mistake than my mother and father.
Things at home changed after that. Our parents treated Sayla and me like we were fragile things.
We never got in trouble, even when we should have, and I remembered nasty fights when Merrick claimed Father was failing to rear me like a proper man, blaming him for my “strange proclivities,” my laziness, my shortcomings.
“Merrick’s better suited to this, is all.” I gestured to the fields stretching out around us. “And he’d be able to pass it on someday. To his own sons.”
Kit pushed up on his elbows, his eyes creasing with his frown. “So could you.”
He sounded so confident that I wondered if he’d forgotten the previous night’s dinner show, courtesy of Sayla. “You heard my sister. I don’t…” I looked aside. “I don’t fancy women. That’s a bit of problem when it comes to bearing children.”
He nodded as he replied, “There are other ways of making a family.”
“I suppose.”
Sitting fully upright, Kit grabbed the tin cup I’d set aside and dipped it into the pail again. He sipped more slowly this time while watching the sun’s journey toward the horizon.
“Should I take all that to mean you don’t believe what your sister said?” he mused. “That Merrick would put you all on the street if he was in charge of things?”
I snorted. “I doubt it. He’d need the hands to run the farm, and who better than the kind you don’t have to pay?” My attempt at humor sounded more sour than I intended .
Kit grunted through another drink of water. When the cup was emptied, he set it aside and stood, then offered me a hand up.
I let him pull me to my feet. His touch left my skin warm long after he let go.
“We’ve a few things left to finish and not much time before dark,” Kit said. “Better get to it.”
At dinner, we filled our bellies and packed our bags with food that would keep on the road. Mother spoiled us both, fawning over me and praising our productive day. Sayla had less to say than the night before, for which I said silent thanks.
I was bone-tired and sore when I collapsed in my bed.
But the sight of the other mattress heaped with what must have been our entire winter stock of canned goods dragged me to my feet again.
Kit was busy washing up and took long enough that I had time to remove every jar from the pile and line them against the wall.
I flung the pillow onto the cleared bed as Kit entered the room. He scrubbed his dark hair with a towel, and ribbons of water streaked his face until he mopped those dry, too. He scanned the space, registering the change before ending on me where I sat on the edge of my straw mattress.
“Did your sister give up so easily?” He gestured to the relocated preserves.
“Looks like it.” I shrugged.
“Pity. I’d just found the soft spot in the floorboards.” He tapped the wood with his stockinged foot.
He dropped the towel into the hamper and lowered himself onto the second bed.
His movements were stiff enough to imply that he, too, felt the strain of our day’s labors.
I waited until he laid down to pull out my sketchbook and pencil from where I had stashed them beneath my pillow, eager to put down a few lines while they were fresh in my mind.
Kit reposed, flat on his back with his hands folded behind his head and one leg kicked over the other. His eyes slid closed while quiet stretched between us.
“Thanks for your help today,” I said finally, but the statement was lost to the silence because he was already asleep.
Kit woke me the next day with a gentle nudge and a shake. At least, I thought it was the next day, but it could have been any hour of the night considering the black sky visible through the bedroom window.
“Time to get on the road.” Kit stood with a pack thrown over each shoulder. One for him and one for me.
Yawning, I pushed myself to sitting and found my boots waiting at the bedside. When I didn’t immediately rise, Kit prodded me again. From the impatience on his face, I guessed he would have put my shoes on for me if he hadn’t been so heavily laden that he might tip over if he bent down.
We’d said our goodbyes the night before, explaining that I would try to be back to visit in a few weeks. Then I would put Mother's fears at ease by assuring her I would not, in fact, become a blacksmith, and throw myself wholly into my responsibilities on the farm.
Kit gave me room to stand, then turned toward the open doorway. I tugged on clean clothes and stepped into my boots, then paused to ensure my sketchbook was tucked safely into the left one.
When I joined Kit at the front door, he held my cloak out to me. My stomach swirled as I walked out of the house and into the darkness of early morning. A gust of autumn wind made me shiver.
By the time the sun rose, we’d left Eastcliff and the rest of the ward well behind us.
As we walked, I talked, and Kit listened.
But he was a good listener, asking timely questions and corralling my wandering thoughts into succinct statements.
It was different than the days spent on the road to my house when he had been as lively as a corpse and about as responsive.
Over the next two days, we passed through farmlands and woods.
We wandered along a river—the Veilwater, Kit told me, named for a waterfall farther down its path—until we found its source and the dry bed that stretched up into the foothills of the Shattered Peaks.
The craggy, hilly area seemed to go on forever.
In the distance, mountains cut a jagged scar across the landscape for miles in both directions.
I’d only ever seen them as vague shapes, hazy on the horizon, and never expected to see them so close.
The harsh terrain that stretched out beneath them made for poor farming and offered little else to encourage establishing any sort of settlement.
This far out, there were no wards, no towns, no militia outposts. Just scrubby mountain grasses and tumbled rock and the occasional grove of trees that had found enough soil to put down roots.
It made for lonely travel, but Kit wasn’t bad company.
By the afternoon of the third day, “only a few miles left” had been the mantra for more than a few miles now.
My feet alternated between numb and aching, and I couldn’t decide which was worse.
In contrast to the blistering pace he’d set at the beginning of our trek, Kit had slowed dramatically.
As his stops became more frequent, I worried we were lost in this wilderness.
Trees were fewer and farther between—and so was shade—and pushing my weary legs up the incline made my muscles burn.
Maybe that was the reason for Kit’s sluggish amble, but the way he searched every stone outcropping and checked compulsively over his shoulder made me suspect there was more to it than that.
We walked along the base of a sheer cliff, where Kit dragged his fingers over the crumbling shale. His brows lowered over his dark eyes as he scanned the area for the tenth time in as many steps. When his survey ended on me, I slumped against the stone wall and sighed.
“Just a few more miles?” I supplied.
Kit shook his head and moved back, craning his neck to look up at an overhang that towered at least ten feet above us. When I searched the same direction, I saw the blue-gray sky with sparse, wispy clouds, and the sudden blots of four human-shaped figures descending.
They leapt off the cliff, dropping fast with arms spread.
I yelped and darted back, slamming into the stone wall before one of the bodies crashed into me.
It dragged me down, raking my elbows and spine against the crumbling rock and sparking pain.
The collision knocked me to the ground, and my attacker jerked me over onto my belly.
Pinned by the assailant now crouched on top of me, I scrambled in the dirt.
My heart raced, and I sucked rapid breaths, inhaling more dust than air as a cloud rose around me.
“Kit!” I shouted and twisted to see what had become of the man who had been beside me moments before. He was toppled and subdued by two men in dark clothes who were busily wrenching his arms behind his back and securing them with rope.
I imagined the same coming for me and pressed my palms against the gritty earth, straining to push or pull myself out from under the weight on my back.
“Don’t fight!” Kit called out to me. “Do what they say! You’ll be fine! ”
But they hadn’t said anything. And every pump of my heart told me I would not be fine, not if I laid still or went along quietly.
The fourth attacker’s leather boots padded across the earth as she approached. She stooped and flashed her sharpened teeth in a smile as she jerked a thumb at Kit. “Your friend here seems pretty smart. Are you?”
Between her legs, I watched the men drop a brown burlap sack over Kit’s head. They cinched it around his neck with another length of rope and gave a tug that must have rendered it strangling before securing the knot.
When the attacker on my back grabbed my wrist, I threw my elbow in a flailing effort that I accompanied with a full-body buck.
“Damn it, quit that!” the man snarled from behind me.
Pulling my knees up, I was halfway to turning, one hand free while the other twisted in the man’s unyielding grasp.
That was when the hard sole of a shoe planted firmly against the side of my head.
The woman above me leveraged her weight into grinding my skull against the ground. My teeth gritted through a wince.
“Hold still or I’ll put my foot in your face instead of on top of it.” The woman twisted her heel across the tender skin of my cheek.
Pressure built between my temples, making thought impossible. Between that and the threat of a kick that would shatter my teeth or break my nose, I was left with little choice but to allow them to bind my wrists.
When they hauled me to my feet, my legs were quivering. I stole another glance at Kit, who stood with a man holding each elbow and his face obscured by the bag. That final sight was not a comforting one as a sack dropped over my head and blacked out everything.