Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 134898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 540(@250wpm)___ 450(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 540(@250wpm)___ 450(@300wpm)
“Absolutely. They deserve clean windows, too.” She turns and sweeps away, the conversation ended.
Now that her back is to me, I make a face at her retreating spine. Bitter old puss. She never rides any of the other repeaters as hard as me, nor any of the women who are employed under her. It’s the fact that I am an actual repeater and a woman that really makes it difficult for her to mask her resentment.
After nearly a year of working as a repeater, I’m used to it.
I turn and clean the window correctly this time, scratching wildly at my skin through my uniform as I do so. The buzz of the dead man’s presence feels as if it is burrowing directly under my flesh, and I wonder if I should say something.
Not to Umala. She already hates me.
I can’t say anything to the guards, either. I notified them about a dead man in an alley last week because I’d felt him. A second one would be less of a coincidence and would point a finger at me. If they find out that I can feel the presence of the dead…my fledgling career would be over.
Everything would be over.
I scrub the window frantically, trying to distract myself. A song? No. Counting? That won’t help. Reciting guild rules? I can’t remember enough of them. I end up biting the inside of my cheek until it bleeds, but the pain helps me focus. After I get done with these windows, maybe I’ll volunteer to go dust in the archives. That should be far enough away from the guild hospital, where I am currently. And maybe Umala will be pleased with my initiative.
By the time I finish the windows downstairs, my crawling skin is driving me mad. I glance around, looking for Umala, but she’s talking with someone near the front hall and I won’t be able to slip past her and leave. I dig my fingernails into my palm, but my hands are callused from years of housework and it doesn’t give me the bitter pinch I need to focus my mind. The inside of my cheek has been bitten so much that it feels like ground meat.
I need something to distract me until I can leave this place. Biting back a whimper of frustration, I grab my bucket and dump the rag in. “Heading upstairs,” I call out to Umala.
She’s deep in her conversation with a guild master and shoots me an irritated look as I interrupt. Right. Well, if there’s one thing Umala likes to do, it’s let everyone know how important her work is. I suspect that guild master isn’t going to be able to get away from her for a while. Her cornering him might be to my advantage.
I need something to distract me so I can finish my job. The buzz of the dead man is only growing more deafening, and it’s starting to scare me. What do I do if it doesn’t stop? What do I do if no one finds him and it just keeps going and going and going?
Head down, I bite back a whimper of frustration as I go up the stairs.
“Be sure and get the patients’ rooms,” Umala calls after me.
“Yes, ma’am,” I yell back, probably more forcibly than I should. Maybe one of the patients will have something I can use to get this feeling out of my head. A bottle of wine would be nice. At this point, I’d even be willing to cut myself with a knife if the pain would distract me enough, though I won’t be able to work if I carve up my hands. I need a better solution.
I race down the hall as quickly as I can, opting to start with the rooms that overlook the alley, since they’re the ones closest to the body. Get it over with already. Maybe I can open a window and pour the soapy water down on someone on the street and force them to veer into the alley.
Then again, maybe it’s not a dead body. Maybe I’m panicking. Maybe it’s something else. Didn’t Ma say once that she grew up in a house where the cook couldn’t eat shellfish or his lips puffed up? Maybe this feeling I have—like I’m being gnawed from the inside—is like that. As I approach the room farthest down the hall, though, the sensation grows stronger. I get to the window, but I don’t even have to look outside to know that there’s a dead man there.
I can feel him. He’s about my age. Throat cut. Been there a few hours now, limbs stiffening. Spirit lurking until he can go to Romus, the god of the dead.
And I’m terrified about the fact that somehow I know all of this.
I’m just a maid trying to be a guild artificer. Not a mancer. Mancers are trouble. Mancers are burned at the stake because they’re a threat. Because magic is outlawed and forbidden, unless it’s in one of the old artifacts.