17. Penny
Penny
I ’d only seen a few town squares in my life: the one in Eastcliff nearest the farm, where Mother and Sayla sold our vegetable crop and excess milk, eggs, and wool; the one in Forstford, where I’d salivated over food vendors and gotten myself kicked out of Kit’s blacksmith shop; and now Ashpoint’s.
People of all ages drifted from one vendor stall to the next, smiling and chatting.
A few waved to me, and I waved back, cracking a smile that was partly friendly but mostly relieved.
These people, this place, they weren’t so bad.
Perhaps the next week or two would be more tolerable than Kit anticipated.
Perhaps the state of things had improved in his father’s absence.
The smells of bread, fish, and cheese made my stomach churn with hunger.
Colorful fabrics and knitted wool clothes flapped like flags in the breeze.
Kit’s coin purse felt heavy in my hand, full of more copper than I’d ever seen in one place.
I had a feeling he would protest being called a wealthy man, but it seemed extravagant to me .
Slinging my pack over one shoulder, I checked the list I’d scribbled in my sketchbook between drawings of the moths that had fluttered around our camp lantern one night on the road. The most recent item to tick off was a bottle of whiskey per Kit’s drowsy request.
As I shopped the stalls, my tab grew at an alarming rate. The little cottage needed everything: dishes and flatware, towels, linens…
I’d promised to repay what I spent, and that thought had me cringing through every purchase, wondering how I could possibly scrape together so much money.
Still, I felt more settled than I had during our journey here.
I hadn’t taken well to switching off keeping overnight watch—or trying to keep watch only to be woken by Kit poking my ribs, then launching into a speech about the importance of vigilance.
It was the most words I got out of him some days.
I found nearly everything I came for, except a pair of goose feather pillows for the couch that had to be ordered. I was making my turn toward the cottage when the last booth on the row caught my eye.
Pastries, cakes, and piles of cookies sat on trays atop a wooden counter. Some of them were so pretty they should have been behind glass. I ventured closer, studying the tiered cake that sat front and center. It was draped with curtains of icing and dotted with edible flowers.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered.
The statement prompted a young woman to rise from where she’d been bent behind the counter. Thick black hair was plaited into braids from her scalp to her shoulders, and a smudge of flour on one high cheekbone made a stark contrast on her mahogany skin.
Her eyes crinkled through a warm smile.“Thank you,” she said. “Made it all myself. ”
I pulled my attention away from the golden pastry shells and muffins topped with glittering sugar. “You’re very talented.”
She crossed her arms atop her starched white apron. “And you’re clearly a man of good taste. Though not a man I’ve seen around here before.”
I bobbed my head. “We just arrived yesterday.”
“We?” She raised a brow.
“My friend and I,” I explained. “He’s… I’m his recruit.”
Her cheery expression brightened even further. “For the next initiation group?”
I shook my head. “I’m just here to work. My friend will be going through initiation, though.”
“Me, too. I’m Rosie.” She reached across the counter to offer a shake I stepped forward to accept.
“Penny.”
Her gaze lingered on my fingers where they wrapped around hers, no doubt noticing the skin mottled red and white and cut through with ropy, raised scars. I swallowed, painfully aware of the seconds dragging by until she released my hand.
“Nice to meet you, Penny.”
A held breath left me as a sigh. “Likewise.”
She showed no apprehension or fear about the Oaths, and I wondered if she knew something I didn’t.
Or maybe it was the other way around. Surely not all the initiates were warned of what awaited them during the rites.
Not everyone had access to a veritable library of information about the Bone Men or the guidance of a former member.
Rather than question it, I turned to the assortment of sweets laid out before me. I motioned to the tray of muffins studded with bits of red fruit. “What flavor are these? ”
“Orange cranberry.” Rosie grabbed one and offered it so I could take a long whiff.
I’d never heard of cranberry, but I’d had an orange once before.
Father brought one home after he and Merrick met a traveling merchant in the next town over.
He’d peeled and sectioned it carefully, giving us each two small slices.
I remembered how the juice stung the splits in my chapped lips and made my cheeks pucker.
It was unlike anything I’d had before or since.
“I’ll take two,” I said.
Rosie’s skirt fanned out as she spun and retrieved a piece of brown paper from the back of the booth. She set a pair of muffins on it side by side, then carefully wrapped them before tying off the bundle with a piece of twine.
Those I carried, too afraid they would end up smashed if I put them in my pack. After paying Rosie, I thanked her, said goodbye, and made my way back to the cottage.
Pushing through the front door, I was equally excited and nervous to show Kit my haul. I found him perched on the edge of the couch cushions, looking more alert than I’d last seen him but no more at ease. He held a tin coffee cup almost to his lips, staring through the faint steam it raised.
The sack slid off my shoulder and hit the floor with a thud that betrayed its substantial weight.
Kit cocked his head and gave me an appraising once-over like he hadn’t seen me all day every day for two weeks.
“The market’s nice.” I closed the door and stepped forward to set the wrapped muffins on the table like an unspoken apology for spending so much of his coin.
He reached for the bundle, untying it and peering at the contents.
“They’re orange cranberry,” I offered, which proved more encouragement than he needed to grab one and take a bite .
“Looks like lunch to me,” he said around a mouthful.
A grin tugged at my lips, and I bent to rifle through the sack until I found the bottle of whiskey. Pulling it out, I held it aloft, watching sunlight beam through the golden amber liquid. “You asked for this earlier…”
Kit looked up, and I could have sworn I saw a weight drop off of him. He abandoned the muffin and stood, snatching the bottle from my hand. Dropping back onto the sofa, he bit down on the cork and yanked it loose, then held it between his teeth as he tipped the whiskey into his coffee cup.
The two liquids mingled in a combination I couldn’t imagine would be appetizing, but Kit didn’t hesitate. He flicked the cork onto the table before lifting the tin mug and doing his best to consume its contents in as few swallows as possible.
I stood by, considering helping myself to the other muffin. About the time I reached for it, Kit finished guzzling and set the cup on the coffee table.
He looked like he had something to say, and my mind raced with possibilities.
Was he upset about what I’d done with the journals?
Mad that I’d taken his coin purse without permission?
Or was he thinking about how I’d slipped my arm around him, taking advantage of his sleep-deprived state to satisfy my own selfish desires?
Kit refilled his cup with whiskey and sipped it slowly as he stared at me. “What exactly does your brother do in the militia?”
The tension building in me rapidly unwound, and I huffed a breath. “I’m not sure.” I shrugged. “He says he’s in line to become Ward Commander. He’s stationed a few wards away from ours.”
“And he’s gone quite often?” Reaching over, Kit broke a chunk off the muffin and popped it in his mouth .
“Constantly,” I replied. “I thought he might come home after Father fell ill and take up his responsibilities on the farm, but he said his loyalties were with the militia.”
Specifically, Merrick had denounced my mother and verbally disowned Sayla and me, claiming the farm and everything about it was in his past and he intended to leave it there.
Father was heartbroken over it, but his protest only made Merrick angrier.
The fit he threw reminded me of the times in my youth when he’d pinned me to the bed and screamed in my face, his voice so loud it left my ears ringing.
He’d berated Father that way, looming over his frail form and shouting until I’d stepped between them and shouted back.
My cheek throbbed at the memory of Merrick’s fist cracking into it, knocking me off my feet. He’d always been bigger than I was. Stronger, too. But mostly meaner.
I looked at Kit and found him chewing while swirling the liquor in his cup.
“Why the questions about Merrick?” I asked. “You don’t usually like it when I talk about him.”
Rather than answer my inquiry, Kit responded with a statement of his own. “You said he went back on rotation right before your father’s body went missing.”
I frowned. “Yes. What of it?”
“How long before?”
Thinking back made my brow furrow. “I don’t know. A day? Maybe two?”
Kit pinched off another piece of muffin and held it up for inspection. The coarse sugar across its crusted top glittered in the light. “And you didn’t find that at all suspicious?”
Bristling, I crossed my arms. Whatever he was getting at, I wished he would come out with it.
“Why should I?” I asked, my voice sharp.
“He’s always coming and going. I hardly think about it.
I’m just glad when he’s gone.” The words spilled out of my mouth like blasphemy, and I cupped my hand over my lips.
In contrast to my sudden shock, Kit remained impassive. “Whose idea was it to bury your father, Penny?”
“I told you before.” Why would he make me admit it again? “It’s my fault. I was afraid…” I trailed off, looking away to cover the sudden flush of shame.
“Did you suggest it?” Kit pressed. “The burial?”
“I don’t remember…”
“Try,” Kit told me. “Think hard.”
The day my father died was one of the darkest of my life.
Mother, Sayla, Merrick, and I stood around his bed, huddled together as he drew his last breath.
Rather, Mother, Sayla, and I crowded in, me in the middle with one arm around each of the women.
Merrick had lingered on the other side of the mattress, aloof, his arms crossed.
After Father’s chest rose then fell with a final, rattling gasp, I looked over at my brother and wished I had his composure. I felt raw. Hollow. My eyes were full of tears as Sayla sobbed against my side and Mother daubed her face with a kerchief.
We’d had time to prepare. Watching Father wither and fail over months made his passing a foregone conclusion. But inevitability didn’t ease the pain.
“What’s to become of us, Pen?” Sayla had sniffled, using my shirt to dry her eyes.
“I’ll take care of you.” A sorrowful sob threatened to choke me, but I muscled it down. “Don’t worry.”
Merrick cleared his throat. “Penwell? Would you join me outside?”
I looked over at my brother as hot tears streaked my cheeks.“Right now?” I asked .
Merrick nodded and turned, heading for the door without another word.
Pulling free of the women, I tailed after my brother. He didn’t face me again until we were outside the cottage, washed in the crisp light of an autumn sunrise.
“I assume you aren’t up to it,” he said, as though the statement stood alone.
I shivered, feeling chilled and teary. “Up to what?”
He could have meant anything. Or everything. I looked across the freshly shorn fields stretching toward the horizon.
“The funeral pyre,” Merrick explained. “The burning.”
I trembled again, this time not from the cold. “That’s the custom. I’ll manage.”
Merrick laid his hand on my shoulder. “You don’t have to.”
I peered into his eyes as green as my own and found his usually rigid features soft.
He’d never been sympathetic about it before, casting blame from the start. It was my fault the barn burned. My fault we lost our winter stores. My fault Sayla got hurt…
I rubbed my palm up my scar-striped forearm.
“We could bury him instead,” Merrick continued. “Find a quiet place, somewhere no one will look.”
I’d thought his offer kind, and my brother was so rarely kind. He claimed it was for Sayla and me, so we didn’t have to face the scorching heat and the pungent stench of skin charring.
“Your brother’s here, Penny.” Kit’s statement returned me to the present. “He came by while you were out and introduced himself as the Shroud Warden. The Bone Men’s second in command. He’s Vi’s husband, the one with the supposed farmhand named Penny. ”
It sounded like a foreign language, words I didn’t fully understand. Or maybe I didn’t want to.
Kit set his mug on the table and stood, taking a few steps toward me while I gaped. “He’s been lying to you and your family, and I think he’s the one who took your father’s body.”
“That’s not… that can’t be true,” I said. But I was beginning to fear it was.
Kit searched my face while his own showed concern. “It makes sense, doesn’t it? You hid the grave well. The clearing in the woods should have been safe. No one could have found that without being told where to look.”
I stood, dumbfounded, slowly taking in what I’d been told. Kit had no reason to lie to me. And, given the questions he’d posed and evidence he’d laid out, I couldn’t deny his logic.
I’d wondered since the moment I’d discovered the grave disturbed how anyone found it. The marking was nondescript. We’d even replaced the underbrush and the sod we’d cut away to disguise our digging. We left that clearing almost exactly how we’d found it.
I felt nauseous and a bit faint. The previous night’s light dinner followed by no food yet today had my head already swimming. That and the growing sense of betrayal and utter stupidity at not having seen Merrick for what and who he was had me swaying on my feet.
Kit reached for my arm, pausing as if asking permission before taking me by the elbow and leading me to the sofa.
We both sat, turned toward each other with our knees almost touching. He moved his grip farther up my arm and left it there, steadying me as he spoke.
“We need to come up with a plan. We have to explain your presence here in a way your brother will believe. ”
“I’m your recruit,” I replied in a flat voice, reciting the party line.
Kit ducked to catch my gaze. His expression was almost apologetic. “I may be able to sell that to the Right Hand because we were friends as children. I can play on those old loyalties, but your brother doesn’t trust me. And I don’t believe he’ll trust you, either.”