96. Now City
NOW: CITY
It took us weeks to reach Eccleston. The horses could only go for so long each day, and I was adamant that no one ride Zara. She was healthy, but her age was undeniable after our pilgrimage, a sunken aspect in her face and a stiffness in her gait worrying me.
By day we encountered the occasional mounted party or wagon, but they seemed to be people going to and from Eccleston on business, not Perpatanians.
We made camp every evening with little to say to each other, foraging for food in the scrubby mining country and taking turns to watch in the dark for anyone following us.
Reed and I normally bedded down next to each other if he was not on watch, but we did not share bedding. One night, I was desperate for his companionship. I crawled closer to him, rearranging my quilt up against his blanket, and lay alongside him.
Eventually, I felt his knuckles graze my cheek. Then he said, “Tell me how your hand is? It is nearly blue with bruising.”
“It’s awful,” I replied. “I fear I won’t have full use of my ring or little fingers ever again. What about your chest and your arm? I will want to change those bandages in the morning.”
He turned to me, first his head and then his body, and curled around me. “I am sorry,” he whispered, pulling me close. “I have not spoken in days, I think.”
“You do not have to say a thing to me,” I answered him.
The city of Eccleston was the wonder that Tessa had always claimed it to be.
It was walled, but not like Skow was, more so the way a house is walled, to provide shelter to those within.
The walls were dotted with several gates from the direction we approached it.
We waited in line for a half hour or so as folk ahead of us declared their business in the city to their city guard.
We could make out some damage had been done from the invasion Tintar had conducted more than three seasons prior, some crumbling to the walls.
The men who interrogated us when we reached the city gate were instantly put at ease by Tessa’s obviously being native to Eccleston.
She explained that we were all folk from the low country and that she had lived there the last couple winters.
Her account of our wanting to get away from the border of Tintar was explanation enough.
“Why doesn’t she mention we’re really coming from Perpatane?” Adelaide asked. “Isn’t Eccleston an ally?”
I shook my head. “Your father told us the citadel distances itself from Perpatane more and more, even if they have pledged meager troops to them in the war on Tintar. They’re no longer accepting aid from Perpatane either.
All the wealthy mining families are paying for the rebuilding.
Best not to mention any connection to either Perpatane or Tintar. ”
We were allowed passage and directed to a street just inside the gate.
The street was mostly made up of businesses that were aligned with Eccleston’s government.
As Tintar’s bizarre sanctuary doctrine dictated, their invasion had only applied to buildings paid for by taxes, and this street had sustained much damage.
A unit of their city guard was marching up and down the street, calling out to people.
Tessa, as instructed, approached one of them and explained who we were.
They pointed us to a rather decrepit building farther down the street, where another guard met us and told us we could dismount and stable our horses in the building’s small stables.
Our wagon was too big to fit, and we left it in the street.
“We can fit in this place, all of us,” Tessa said after speaking to the man. “They’re offering cheap rent to war refugees if those folk can help restore the buildings. So we can stay here until Thane finds us in the city.”
“Do you think he made it out?” Adelaide asked.
I nodded at her. “He and his drivers were readying to evacuate hours after we were. And in the tumult of the tower’s fire, I doubt the army could restrict him. Most of them were already camping in the woods, ready to leave.”
All of us found work to occupy us. Jade, Fox, and I began to clean out the building piled with ash and debris.
It had been a home for older boys in tutelage preparing to apply to Eccleston’s many universities.
I tried to assign Adelaide the most simple tasks, as she was little help.
Dermid, Reed, and Keir found arduous work as day laborers helping to rebuild the sacked parts of the city.
Tessa sought out and found folk she knew from her previous life who helped her and Ilsit find work in a fellow chandler’s, rolling and making candles, their backs sore each day from lifting cauldrons of wax.
At the end of each day, the nine of us were exhausted.
The city guard visited with grain for our horses and thin mattresses stuffed with straw so that we no longer had to sleep on the floor. We were told an officer of the city would visit us once a moon to inspect our restoration efforts and collect the rent we were to pay.
It took Thane some time to reach Eccleston. What caused him delay was the work practically demanded of him by the mining territories, who needed more transportation than ever before. In setting up that business, he was held back, but when he reached us he brought more provisions and coin.
Adelaide hurtled out of the house when she heard his voice greeting Tessa in the street, throwing herself into his arms.
Thane, guessing his daughter was not ready to be pulled away from her stepmother, joined us living in the boys’ home and took one of the rooms for himself. His drivers and other men would meet him in the street, and we realized he was operating his transport business from the house.
Thane reported that the fire in the Tower of Skow had angered the penitents within.
They had apparently, walking past the burning channels and fountains, secured their horses to their wagons and plowed past the soldiers at the skull’s eye entrances.
Some were returning to the low country, no matter the threat of Tintar, and some made for Eccleston.
“Well, look at that,” Ilsit muttered to me. “Your little fire trick saved a thousand odd souls as well as us.”
She had been trying for a joke. We smiled sadly at each other, and she took my hand. It was like a promise, a plan that one day we might laugh again.