The Shadow Accords Box Set: Books 1-3

by D. K. Holmberg

  It shouldn’t be her explaining to him what was expected of him, should it? Kel or Etan did a better job and had been here longer. Etan had offered to work with Stiv, but the boy had so far avoided him. Kel and Etan stayed together as they often did, watching her from across the street.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Carth said.

  Stiv held up the sack Vera had given him. “Vera wants me to sell these sweetbreads.”

  Carth nodded. “Good luck.”

  “Is that what you do? Are you finding a better place to sell your breads?”

  Carth glanced at Stiv. She didn’t want to be the one to tell him how she managed to collect all the scraps she did. Let him remain untouched by the seedy side of the city. He didn’t deserve whatever had made him a stray—none of them did. Let Stiv hold on to that innocence a little longer.

  “That’s what I do.” She started away from him, not wanting to lie to him any more. It was bad enough that Kel and Etan had drawn her into their collections. She didn’t want them to draw Stiv into it as well.

  As she crossed the street, Stiv caught her and grabbed onto her arm. “How are you selling them? I haven’t managed to sell any!”

  Carth turned and faced him, leaning forward to meet his eyes. “Do what you have to to collect enough to keep yourself safe,” she said.

  Stiv blinked. “Safe from what?”

  Carth glanced back at the tavern. From what? Not Vera and Hal. They had welcomed her when they didn’t have to, and now they feared she’d brought the attention of the A’ras to their tavern.

  “How did you end up here? Where did Hal find you?” she asked.

  Stiv looked to the ground. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Carth had assumed that Hal brought Stiv here to help him, but what if that wasn’t the case? “Did he force you to come?” she asked.

  “What? No!”

  “Then where?”

  Stiv swallowed. “My family… they’re gone. Caught in the fighting.”

  “Why?”

  Stiv frowned. “They’re Reshian, like you.”

  “I’m not Reshian.”

  Stiv’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t serious when I said that.”

  Carth sighed. “I’m not going to hurt you, Stiv. Just do your best to sell the breads. Otherwise you’ll have to learn to collect scraps.”

  “Collect what?” Stiv asked.

  She hadn’t determined how old he was. Possibly eight, but he was skinny enough that he could pass for much younger. The clothes Hal had found for him were a few sizes too big. Mostly they looked to be Kel’s castoffs. His wavy brown hair hung to his shoulders and had been matted until Vera had taken the time to wash it.

  Carth pulled one of the coin purses that she’d snatched from well-dressed men from her pocket and shook it. “Coins.”

  His eyes widened as he stared at the coin pouch. “Where did you get that?”

  She debated answering, but how could she keep that from Stiv? He was a stray, no different from her. “Either you sell breads or you collect scraps. That’s what you need to learn. Either way, you bring what you get to Vera.” And then she would use it to buy protection from the A’ras. Or had. Would it still work? Would they be safe from them?

  “Scraps?”

  She nodded. “You’ll learn to collect enough. It’s your way of thanking her and Hal for giving you a place to stay and a place to sleep.”

  Stiv reached for the purse. Carth let him have it. It was easier for her to collect coins than for him. “How am I supposed to do this?”

  She wanted to teach him, to show him what he would need to do, but that wasn’t why she was here. There were things she needed to learn, and that meant she had to find Jhon, discover what he knew about her family and how he seemed to know so much about her.

  “Ask Kel. Or Etan. He’s a little better than Kel anyway.”

  She nodded toward the other boys. They stood too openly, and when Kel lumbered toward the man he targeted, Carth could tell he wouldn’t be able to hide himself as well as he needed. For someone who was supposed to collect scraps, the same person who had taught her, he did a poor job of it.

  “What can they show me?” Stiv asked.

  Carth grabbed Stiv by the shoulders and guided him across the street. She stood in the shadows between a pair of buildings, wanting nothing more than to hide. A cloud moved over the sun, giving her a bit more coverage as she watched. “See what he does?” Carth asked, pointing to Kel.

  Stiv watched Kel, and his eyes widened when Kel bumped into the man and lifted a purse from his pocket. Kel immediately turned toward an alley and disappeared. The man took a few steps before patting his pocket and apparently realizing what had happened. With a shout, he turned and chased after Kel, but Carth knew he would be safe. He might not be clever with his hands, but he would be quick in the alleys.

  “What did he do?” Carth asked.

  Stiv looked up to her. “He… he stole.”

  Carth nodded. “Decide what you’ll do. And don’t tell Vera. You don’t have to collect scraps the same way Kel does. If you don’t, then you sell the sweetbreads, make a few copper nils a day, and bring those to Vera.” She shrugged. “If you do, and if you get lucky, then you can collect a bit more. Either way, you’ll be safe.”

  “What happens if I don’t make enough?”

  “You will.”

  “But if I don’t?”

  Carth watched Etan standing on the side of the street, eyeing her and Stiv. “You’ll be fine.”

  She patted him on the shoulders and left him.

  Carth slipped along an alley, getting away from the docks and away from the noise, making her way through the city. She paused at the herbalist, tempted to return. Were she to learn an honest trade, wouldn’t it be at a place like that? Her mother would have wanted her to learn. They were lessons that she had tried teaching her, but Carth had only been interested in playing games with her father. Because of that, both of her parents were gone.

  The old woman in the shop must have been looking out the window. She pushed open the door and waved to Carth, motioning her into the shop.

  “Have you come for more nevern oil and vashi leaves?”

  Carth shook her head. She eyed the bins of branches before turning to the wall of oils. Even her mother would have been impressed with the variety. “What you gave us the last time was enough. Thank you.”

  “Gave? Who said I gave you?”

  Carth bobbed her head and fished the vial out of her pocket before handing it back to the woman. That must have been why she had wanted her to come back to the shop.

  The old woman waved her hand. “I didn’t really worry about that. I know enough craftsmen who can make me more.”

  Carth paused at the shelf with the leaves. Many were in jars, and powdered. She remembered going with her mother when she collected leaves, and her mother playing a game of asking the name of each leaf she collected, and then asking how best to store them. As much as Carth cared for her mother, she had no interest in herbalism. Her mother had never said it, but Carth suspected that disappointed her.

  “How do you get so many different varieties?” She leaned forward, recognizing flatwort leaves. These were spotted with wide purple splotches, harvested when the flatwort would be the most potent.

  “I collect them,” the woman answered. “What herbalist does not collect her own supplies?”

  “But you can’t find flatwort anywhere around Nyaesh, and the goldenrod is much brighter than what you can find near here.”

  The woman stared at her with a funny expression. She lifted the jar containing the goldenrod leaves. They were a brilliant gold like their namesake, and the long, slender leaves rolled into a tube shape. The variety around the city had a much paler color, one that matched Stiv’s hair.

  “You know of goldenrod?”

  Carth nodded absently as she moved along the shelf, looking at a few other items. “My mother would drag me along when she harvested
leaves.”

  “Your mother is an herbalist?”

  Carth glanced up. “I don’t think she would call herself that. She had an interest.” She shrugged. “She was always mixing concoctions for my father and me.”

  “Ah, I should have known you had some talent when you first came to my shop. Not many understand the different oils, particularly nevern oil.” The herbalist smiled. “You don’t sound as if you were impressed by what she makes for you.”

  “Made,” Carth said. She was proud of herself that she didn’t begin crying when speaking of her mother. It had taken her a long time to reach that point, but now she could think on her without the tears flowing, and without the painful knot forming in her throat, and without the gnawing in her belly that she’d once had.

  The herbalist nodded. “She is gone, then.”

  “She is.”

  “Ah, so many lost these days, especially with what happens outside of the city.”

  Carth didn’t know much about what happened outside the city. Her parents had protected her from it, but they had always moved her south.

  “There are few who take an interest in such things,” the herbalist went on. “Alchemists do. Herbalists such as myself. Healers understand that different plants and oils can be used in healing salves and medicines. I have not heard of too many with a passing interest.” The herbalist slid the jar back onto the shelf and stopped at the counter, leaning on it. “Did she have a shop such as this?”

  Carth shook her head. “I don’t think she ever sold what she made. If she did, I never saw it.”

  The herbalist smiled, but this time it didn’t reach all the way to her eyes. “You and your father were her only customers! Almost as if you had your own shop.”

  “My mother would take her powders as well,” Carth said.

  “Of course she would,” the herbalist said. “All good practitioners do.” The woman used the counter for support as she weaved around to the other side. “You have an eye for herbs, you know.”

  “I don’t have an eye. I recognized the ones that my mother showed me.”

  “Interesting that she would teach you about flatwort.”

  Carth looked up from the row of dried fruit. Most were berries she recognized, though some were more exotic than anything that she would normally find in Nyaesh. Why hadn’t she noticed that when she had been here the last time?

  But then, she had been more concerned about Kel. She had wanted to do anything to help him mask the bruising, and disguise it so that Vera wouldn’t see it and get upset. There hadn’t been the time—or the interest—to wander through the herbalist’s shop.

  “Why is that interesting?” Carth tried to think about what she’d learned of flatwort, but those memories were hazy. She’d never really paid attention when her mother demonstrated the different leaves. When she would get going talking about them, Carth often started to lose focus, not paying the same attention to her mother as she gave to her father when he discussed strategies for following someone, or how he could climb onto rooftops.

  “Oh, there are plenty of uses for flatwort, but unless you know what you’re doing, the plant is dangerous. The leaves are similar to another—”

  “Gardash,” Carth said, the name coming to her.

  The herbalist watched her a moment. “Yes. It is called that in some places. In Nyaesh, it is known as shadesbreath. A deadly plant, and one that is much too like flatwort for most. With flatwort, the leaves have three larger spots. With shadesbreath, they are smaller, but still three.” She smiled. “The other differences are more difficult to detect.”

  Carth remembered her mother describing something about gardash. Wasn’t it something about veins on the bottom of the plant? She couldn’t remember.

  “Worse, they grow in many of the same climates.” The woman rustled behind her counter and pulled a jar out, which she set on the counter. Inside were leaves that looked no different than the flatwort that the woman had in the other jar. Carth doubted she would have been able to pick one out as different from the other.

  “Why is gardash—shadesbreath—so dangerous?”

  “Ah, because most die simply touching the leaves.”

  Carth glanced at the jar and wondered why the herbalist would even have such a thing here, especially if it was that dangerous. Did she want someone to accidentally grab the jar and get poisoned? “Most?”

  “Not all would suffer. Like many things, there are those immune to that particular effect.”

  The herbalist shook the jar slightly and then set it back under the counter. “Better not to pay much attention to things like that,” she said. “Too many have suffered, especially here.”

  The way she said it made Carth wonder if shadesbreath was the reason that the A’ras blades were so dangerous. Did they use something like that to poison the blade? Probably not. Carth had touched the blade countless times and had never been harmed.

  “Was there anything in particular that you wanted?” the herbalist asked.

  Carth scanned the shop, looking around one more time before turning away. She had thought… no, there was nothing for her here. Her mother might have wanted her to know about leaves and plants, but she had never taken the time to understand them. And now… now she would never get to learn. Now she had become a thief.

  “I’m sorry to have bothered you,” she said.

  The woman watched Carth for a moment, then smiled. “There is no bother. Come as often as you would like. It’s always pleasant speaking to those with a shared interest.”

  Carth turned away without saying anything more. She didn’t want to hurt the old woman’s feelings by telling her that she had no interest. Had she any interest in learning from her mother, she might have something of a future. Instead, she was forced to use the skills her father had taught her, but there was only one way she could use his skills, which meant that she had no other destiny but to be a thief.

  Did that mean that someday, the Thevers would expect her to join? Was that what she was meant to become?

  13

  Days passed uneventfully. As much as Carth wanted to find Jhon and discover what he might know about her family, she feared what she might learn. What would she say if she learned that her father had been a thief of some sort? Realizing that he’d prepared her for it made her more concerned about the man he was, and in a way, she didn’t want to know the truth.

  She wondered how she had not seen it before, but she hadn’t wanted to see it. Her father had been… well, he’d been the one person she’d looked up to. With him gone, she had no one.

  With each day, she wandered the streets near the docks, hesitating to travel too far into the rest of the city. She didn’t need to go beyond the docks to grab enough coin to appease Vera, and with Stiv wandering through the streets, still intent to sell Vera’s sweetbreads, she preferred to keep an eye on him. He hadn’t tried any of Kel’s techniques, but she suspected that it was only a matter of time before he did, especially with as difficult as it would be to sell the breads.

  Some days, Carth felt drawn to the herbalist shop. Most of the time, she stood outside, staring at the sign outside the door, standing off to the side and in the shadows, hiding as her father had taught her. The more she thought about it, the more it bothered her that she had no real trade. Staying with Vera, she might learn to run a kitchen and she might learn baking, but the only skill that offered her a way out was thieving, and that risked her safety more than anything. Had she taken the time to listen, and had she been willing to learn from her mother, she would have had another skill she could have leaned on.

  It had been three days since she’d last visited the herbalist shop when she again found herself standing outside and in the shadows, watching a few people as they made their way in and then out of the shop. What did they buy? What powders or dried fruits or leaves did they come for? Was it for healing, as she suspected the older woman with the limping gait came to the herbalist for, or was it something else? Carth imagined
that the young woman with the raven hair came to the herbalist for a love concoction. Her mother had scoffed at the idea that there were mixtures that would change emotion, but she had continued to mix powders specific to Carth and instructed her to take them each day.

  As Carth waited, she pulled one of her mother’s books from her pockets and flipped through the pages. She might not be able to read any of the writing, but a few of the pages had pictures, diagrams with labels written in Ih, mostly of plants or leaves or fruits. An herbalist guidebook of sorts. When Carth had discovered this, she began to wonder if the old woman would be able to help translate it for her.

  The shop emptied again and she waited, uncertain if another would come to the shop. No one did, so Carth crept slowly, making her way across the street and to the door. Once there, she hesitated. Would she bother the woman by coming again?

  Pushing open the door, she found the main portion of the shop empty.

  Carth looked around, expecting the herbalist to come from behind the counter, but she did not. “Hello?”

  Silence answered her.

  Carth peeked behind the counter, but the old woman wasn’t there. Hadn’t she just been here?

  A door led out the back of the shop and Carth considered going through it, seeing where the herbalist might have gone, but she didn’t want to scare her, especially not when she had questions.

  Carth returned to the main portion of the shop, determined to wait, and looked at the jars of powders. The flatwort was gone, the space where the jar had been now missing. Curious, Carth made her way to the back of the counter, looking for the jar of gardash, but didn’t see it there either.

  She felt a flush of embarrassment that she would even be looking. The herbalist had been kind to her and had offered help and suggestions when Kel had needed something to obscure his injury, and this was how she would repay her?

  After waiting for a while longer, Carth left the shop. As soon as she did, she felt something off.

  Her skin felt tight and there was a heaviness to the air, an energy of sorts, like there would be with a coming rain, only the cloudless sky didn’t call out that there would be rain.