He held little use for the family of man. Little hope. The few who bore their burdens well and strove to raise up a child in this age of rumor earned his esteem. But they would surely be beaten under when the tide of bad choices came back upon them all.
He’d known it when they sent him here.
He knew it better now.
He couldn’t stand against it without thinking boldly, even if what he considered was only an exercise to ease his battered mind and spirit.
The man looked about, taking in the modest appointments of his isolated home. It held no touch of warmth. He only existed here, forever on the edge of either abandoning the honor of his sentence or of death. The walls kept out the sun, and there were some few beds for his other wards. Besides this, and the basic necessities, it was shelter, nothing more.
It seemed barrenness had gotten into everything in and around him. And maybe there was a blessing even there. Perhaps it dulled the reality he sensed had consumed the lands of men; and if dulled to him, how awful might the reality be?
And yet, however hard and pitiless he now was, he nevertheless felt a seed of hope. Perhaps his purchase of some parchment had been a small act to cultivate that seed. He guarded against undue optimism; blessings and surprises came when expectations remained low. Still, a seed of hope …
His weathered face turned up in a bitter smile as he considered that his cultivation of hope would be named by others as an act of heresy. The world had been stood on its head. He saw that more clearly, he decided, because of the dire circumstances his life had come to. And it might take such to set down what he dared now to write.
The patter of small feet interrupted his thoughts. He looked up to see his youngest ward standing at the mouth of the hall, staring at him. She was just four years old. She’d been born with a disfigurement of the lips, so that she could never quite smile, or quite close her mouth. Always you could see some of her upper teeth, crooked as they were.
He had not been able to find a home for this child.
Nor, as he thought about it now, would it have been wise to do so. The life she’d have known in the company of cruel children and adults who traded darkly on such disfigurements would have been drear; he thought of tenendra camps where oddities were caged, and he thought of panderers with base clientele.
How unfortunate. For the sunny spirit of the girl often proved the only cheer the man knew in a day. In the absence of the looks and cruel jokes and misunderstanding here in his isolated home, she had all the confidence she deserved. He waved her over, and she ran and leapt into his lap, hugging him close.
“Where did you go this time?” she asked, always eager to hear stories of any kind.
“Just supplies, dear one.” He would not tell her yet of the death of the boy she considered a brother.
She smiled, a smile he knew would be reviled in the cities of men, or laughed at and mocked. Yet to him there existed no sweeter expression, none he would rather receive as payment for any joke or laugh or play. He smiled back.
“Did you get any molasses sticks?” Her voice slurred around the words of the confection, her lips unable to make the sound. She looked up expectantly.
He took two from his breast pocket and handed her one. “Make it last,” he said.
She nodded. “Did you meet any interesting people?” In addition to the stories, the girl always wished to know of others, as in all her life she had only ever known the other wards—she longed to travel and meet new people.
The man returned her nod. “Some interesting people indeed. But not, I think, anyone you’d have cared to meet. You’re much nicer than they.”
“You always say that,” she replied. “Maybe sometime someone will come to visit us, and then we’ll know who is the nicest.”
The man smiled. “Yes, maybe.”
The girl looked at the tabletop. “What are you doing?”
Finally, he set aside the charm and put his own molasses stick in his lips. “I’ve got some things to write down,” he said, and ran his hands over the parchment laid flat on the table before him.
In the sallow light of his single candle, the parchment looked brown, like his skin. He was no author, reader, or scrivener. His profession and skill came first of the body. But he had a keen appreciation of ethics, his rigor in their observance among his most prized qualities. And to be honest, he lived by wit as much as skill. He knew how to write this. Whether it would come to anything, he knew not. But, he did know the act alone would comfort him.
And just now, that more than anything was all he hoped for.
“Can I help?” the girl asked. “I know all my letters.”
The weathered man looked into the girl’s eyes and wondered if it wouldn’t be most appropriate, after all, to have a babe help him write such a thing as he was set to write. After all, it was for her and all those like her that he meant to do it.
“I will write, and you will ensure I make the letters well.”
She put her molasses stick in her mouth and leaned forward to begin.
He took up his pen and dipped it into a phial of black ink. He paused a moment and looked into his candle. He wondered if, once he had finished writing the parchment, he could find a way to give it power and purpose.
He knew but one way. And access to that means remained a myth and mystery to most. Going into the deeps where it lay guarded by vows given in a time before memory was a fool’s errand.
But pausing with his ready pen, a dried-up creature in a dried-up place watching after the world’s orphans, an outcast with the audacity to even consider writing what he now planned, he thought himself the perfect fool. For only fools went where courage and reason would not. And that, he admitted to himself, was where he would need to go if tonight’s scribblings were more than simply his need to purge his anger and frustration and sadness.
With one rough hand, the sun-worn man stroked the honey-colored hair of his youngest ward. With the other, he put ink to parchment and began to write.
He penned deep into the night, thinking of a better world for the wards that came into his care, a better world for this girl with her beautiful, ruined smile. On and on the weathered man wrote, pouring out the quiet thunder of his heart.
CHAPTER FORTY
Reunion
The lad came alongside the muscled auctioneer, his head straight, his feet heavily chalked. He strode the boards, his feet producing large dust clouds with each step. He took his place at center stage as though he was accustomed to the bidding, the judgment, accustomed to treading the boards. This time the man’s hand did not even fully rise to indicate a price before sticks flew high against the late afternoon sun. Many simply did not lower their sticks.
Wendra looked on through hazy eyes, sweat stinging them and blurring her vision. Penit stood bravely for several moments before she recognized him.
When she realized the prize at auction, a flood of strength ripped through her. This was what she had not allowed herself to consider, to know. The auctioneer’s hand gestured convulsively, acknowledging the raised bids, his eyes wide with the number of sticks unyielding in their determination to purchase the young boy they did not know. All bidding, all wanting, all but Jastail. He had not yet bid on a single person. But Wendra cared nothing for that, or for the highwayman. The song leapt in her beyond any pain or anger she had known, the feeling alive and anxious to be birthed into the air. Dark, disturbing snatches of melody occurred to her spontaneously, haunting and fierce, seeking a voice to give them violent life in the auction yard, on the auction yard.
Wendra struggled with the painful emotions, lurching from Jastail’s grasp, her eyes fixed on Penit—the child who went to bring her help, now tied and priced and subject to this humiliating doom. The thought of it overcame her, and Wendra turned to the sky and howled with a fury she had never known. Her aimless wail rose in strident, ululating tones, shattering the silence and knocking her to the ground as soon as it had begun. Her scream ascended harmlessly, echo
ing above the larcenous crowd.
Jastail helped her to her feet. His eyes carried a hint of fear, but not, Wendra thought, for his life. But she was too angry to worry about him. The blinding white rage began to build again within her. She looked at Penit, who stared at her from the boards, a grateful smile on his lips. He raised his bound wrists to wave to her, and was roughly cuffed by the auctioneer.
“Be still, lady,” Jastail said. “You’ve no need of any of this. I intend to purchase the boy.”
Wendra looked with a strange mix of revulsion and gratitude at the highwayman, who slowly lifted his stick and did not drop it again until only his remained high against the pitiless sky.
* * *
Wendra awoke before she opened her eyes. She lay quiet, aware that she did not occupy her own bed. She always washed the linen and bedclothes with soap cured in spruce buckets, and she always beat the dust from them with spruce switches. She liked morning to arrive with the clean scent of spruce. The heavy blankets on her now smelled of rough wool and men.
The back of her throat throbbed, as though a bruise were forming there. But Wendra refused to discover where she was just yet and continued to regulate her breath in the slow cycles of sleep. A slight movement made her conscious of another hand in her own, and reality crashed in upon her in happy, bitter waves.
She opened her eyes and saw Penit at her bedside. The boy slept in a chair with his head against the bedpost, his small hand curled around her fingers. He appeared peaceful, wearing a vague smile on his dirty cheeks. Wendra squeezed his hand; hot tears ran from the corners of her eyes. Soon, Penit awoke, and the smile grew on his lips.
“You’re all right,” he said with bright enthusiasm.
“And you,” Wendra said. “I thought I’d lost you forever. What happened?”
Penit’s smile faded as quickly as it came. “I followed the river once I came to it,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “Sooner or later, you always come to people if you follow the water. I made good time, too. No dawdling, no sidetracks. Kept to my script, you know. I kept thinking of you alone in that cave with the fever. No one ever depended on me that way,” he said, trailing off.
Wendra put her other hand on top of Penit’s, pressing it between her own. “You did all you could,” she said softly. “Do not be ashamed. Tell me what brought you here.”
The door to the small room opened and Jastail walked in. “You’re awake, good. You look weak, but we must leave. Be about it.” He went to a dresser opposite her and pulled it back from the wall. He pried the back panel off and began loading a satchel with items hidden within. He smiled at her with one side of his mouth, and went back to his work.
Penit stood from his chair and squared his shoulders toward Jastail. He kept Wendra’s hand, but raised his chin. “You must let us go.”
Jastail did not look up. “Boy, for the trouble this is turning out to be, I’d almost agree with you. I admire your asking it. Now, see that you help the lady, and save your comments on me until we’re clear of this place. I don’t want to have to gag you.”
Penit fumed, shaking with pent-up anger. Wendra raised herself on one elbow. “What now, Jastail?” she asked. “You bought Penit’s freedom. It’s time for us to part company.”
Jastail looked up. “You can’t buy what you already own.” He cinched the satchel shut. “You are an insightful woman, but your ill-founded belief in people cripples your judgment.”
A hint of regret edged his words, but Wendra could not tell if it was for her or for hopeful people in general. He rose and shouldered the parcel. “Don’t dawdle. Get to your feet and come to the rear door. Mind my warning; you are not among friends here. There’s not a soul in this place that cares more for you than the price you’ll fetch. And they’d have use of you before the chalk is put to your feet.
“I must buy a horse. I’ll be at the door in a meal’s time. There’s bread and root for you at the table, and clean water. Eat and be ready.”
He closed the door and left them alone again.
“He is the one that brought me here,” Penit said. “I’d followed the river half a day when he rode upon me with four others. I tried to explain about you, I told him you were sick and needed help. He asked me for directions. I told him I would lead him to you. But he said I looked ill, and that he would send me with his friends to a safe place, and bring you back himself. He would not listen to me. So I finally gave him directions to the cave.” Again Penit trailed off. “And now he has us both.”
“What do you mean?” Wendra asked. She sat up to the edge of the bed and pulled Penit around to face her.
“You saw it,” Penit said. “He intended to sell me. All of us were being sold. That’s what he meant when he said he couldn’t buy what he owned.”
“He does not own you,” Wendra protested. “Or me. We will leave here together, right now.”
Penit backed away, shaking his head. “No, Wendra. I do not like him, but the others know we are not traders. That’s what the others call them. They will capture us as soon as we are alone among them. The others … they do horrible things … and it would have been worse if it weren’t for Dwayne.”
“Who’s Dwayne?”
“I met him when they put me in the pen; that’s where they keep everyone that will go to the boards with chalk on their feet. They put me and him together and made us fetch things, running all the time. Dwayne helped the younger ones.”
Wendra took a short breath. She didn’t want to think about how young the children he spoke of might be.
“He also helped the older people, kind of showing them how to deal with the traders in order to get better food, or at least more food. He made it all kind of a game. And it kept me from getting too scared.”
Wendra drew Penit close and hugged him to her breast. “I am glad to hear it. If we could, we’d take him with us. As it is, we’ll let Jastail take us away from here. But I won’t let him sell either of us.” She swallowed against the fear and rage that threatened to overwhelm her. “We will purchase our freedom from him one way or another.”
With Penit’s help, Wendra stood up. Before they went out into the outer room to sit and eat, she shared with Penit the false name—Lani—she’d been using. The boy nodded and winked as they went out. At the table, Penit scarcely chewed his food, devouring mouthfuls and washing it back with long gulps of water. Wendra sliced a root with a knife beside the bread. As she ate she considered how to escape. She rose, leaving Penit to finish his meal. She then hid the knife inside her boot, and searched the other rooms of the small ramshackle house. She found nothing of any use. The austere utility of the shack suggested it was always used for the same purpose: housing people he intended to sell.
She went back into the bedroom and quickly rummaged through the dresser, finding a few items of clothing, laundered and folded, though threadbare for all that. She pulled the dresser from the wall and used the knife to pry back the panel she’d seen Jastail get behind.
A hollowed compartment sat empty save for a small piece of parchment bearing a handwritten note:
Meet me at the wayhouse two days from the final auction. Bring every man you can trust for five handcoins. We’ll set the balance right, and you may have yourself a route of your own for the trouble. Watch that you’re not followed. And should you feel ambitious, know I’ve taken precautions against your greed.
Wendra tucked the note inside her bodice, and checked to be sure she hadn’t missed anything. Satisfied, she replaced the panel and rejoined Penit at the table. She didn’t know the nature of the meeting, but if it involved her, then preventing the arrival of the number of “men available for five handcoins” improved her odds.
Something Jastail will surely understand. She smiled.
She took up a crust of bread and was eating it when she heard the sound of steps approaching the outer door.
Jastail entered; he surveyed the room in a quick sweep. “You may have been tempted to steal the knife,” he said dryly. �
�Perfectly understandable. I’ll give you the opportunity of putting it back.”
Wendra considered playing coy, but decided not to test the rogue. If she were to use the weapon at all, it needed to be once they were well outside town. She produced the knife from her boot and laid it next to the bread crumbs on the table.
“Good,” Jastail said. “Quickly, and hold your tongues.”
Penit went grudgingly and Wendra followed.
They got onto their mounts, and Jastail led them casually down a vacant alley toward the east, never turning onto the main street. The sun lay low in the west, sending their shadows in long, dancing rhythms on the ground before them. Penit fought to ride alongside Wendra even through the narrowest lanes. His face shone with the conflicting emotions of hatred when he looked toward Jastail and relief when he saw Wendra.
Would we make it if we made a break for it now?
She dismissed the thought. They might be able to break away, but it would have to be once they reached the open road, and even then it would need to be planned. If Jastail caught the boy, Wendra could not leave him again.
They passed a cluster of tents and rode into a field dotted with cook fires. Shallow rain ditches had been dug to catch the rainwater as it rolled from oiled canvases stretched over wooden frames. The smells of roasting grouse and prairie hens rose on the dusk air. Wendra’s stomach growled at the savory smell.
“What is this then?”
As a group of men stepped into their path, Jastail called them to a halt.
“I’ve business elsewhere,” Jastail said, looking past the men at the open land along the horizon.
“So pressing that you would leave at suppertime,” the man retorted. “And taking your stock with you.” The others laughed, their eyes passing from Wendra to Penit and back. “How far the great trader Jastail has fallen that he buys his own wares. Damaged goods, my friend.” The man shifted his head to the side to affect a sidelong glance of reproof.
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