Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
I also happen to like her tart company.
“I am not here upon Anathos’s soil for much longer,” she says. “Why must you prolong my agony.”
My friend’s words slice through me. She was not my first stop on this glum and cold daybreak. I went to check on Elly and didn’t get farther than the back alley behind the farrier’s quarters. He was loading her body onto a cart, his daughters and niece hovering in the doorway as if they all wished they could follow her into her grave.
Assuming he even bothers to dig her one.
“You are quiet today,” Mare observes.
“I am not, and you know this brew is just for pain relief.” I glance back in her direction again. “Although I suspect your griping about the taste gives you a vital hobby. If you stop, you’ll expire on the spot.”
Her dismissive hand betrays the high station she once enjoyed, and I imagine jeweled rings on her fingers and her nails painted. “You will miss me when I am gone.”
Leaning into the crackling flames, I wrap up my hand in my cloak’s long woolen sleeve and still feel the heat as I take the brewing kettle off its iron arm. As I pour, the dried leaves swirl about in the tin mug and I imagine her ashes scattering in the wind.
I have to clear my throat.
“You’re still drinking this,” I repeat roughly, knowing that as I’m unable to treat my own pain, I soothe hers with a vengeance whether she likes it or not.
And she doesn’t.
During the steeping, I pass a glance over the shabby interior. My only friend lives in what used to be the cobbler’s shop before he moved closer to the village square. The shelves that once held the maker’s inventory are the rib cage of the structure, lining all the walls. Here and there, pairs of shoes that were left behind are covered in dust, the fine layers buffering their contours just as the pilled blankets I pile on Mare bury her own aged body.
“So whatever have you overheard at that ratty establishment of yours?” she says.
“The Gauntlet is not mine.” I stir with a dented spoon. “And there is no news.”
“You lie, girl. Have there been any more slaughtered cows?”
Swallowing a curse, I shake my head and wonder why I told her anything. Then again, fear is like water. It will find any gap to penetrate for its expression.
Mare sniffs. “Well, that is a yes if ever I have heard one.”
“I’ve said nothing—”
“So another demon has struck.”
Between one blink and the next, I see Mr. Cavenish standing in the pub’s doorway, bloody intestines in one hand, that mournful cowbell in the other. “We don’t know that’s what—”
“Is there something else out in the forest that is both brutal and intelligent—or do you think wolves of the wood are smart enough to know the compass? Which point did they hit this time.”
I imagine her in the court of Prosperitus, dressed in silks and attended by servants, and I ponder the kinds of lives where a lack of memories is a gift. Her mind’s still sharp, so she’s spared nothing of her fall from such heights, this rickety, leaky palm that’s caught and held her a shelter below the ranks and standards of even her groundskeepers.
Yet she’s never complained. She’s never talked about what happened, either. Maybe that’s how she copes.
As the chatter from the fire grows loud between us, I lie. “We’re safe here within the village wall.”
“And you are the one who brings me wood for my fire and that foul medicine of yours, all of which is found outside of those crumbling rocks.” In a softer tone, she adds, “I worry over you.”
“I’m the last person you need to be concerned about.”
Now that the leaf flakes have sunk to the bottom of the tin, I wrap the mug in a cloth and bring the brew over to her. When I hold out the cup, she takes it in her skeletal hands, even as she shakes her head.
“Tell me the news and I will choke this back. Otherwise, it is going to go cold.”
As I meet her scowl with a glare of my own, I am careful to not look into her eyes. “Only you, Mare, could try and force a hand with your own well-being.”
“Is it working?”
I sit at the foot of the pallet. Even though she can’t see my face, I lower my head to hide a blush. “A man came into the pub last night.”
I have immediate regret over the admission. This is precisely how I got into trouble with the demons, dead cows, and compass points. Then again, I have nobody else to talk to.
“There are a lot of men in that den of iniquity,” she remarks dryly.
“Time to drink. Or that’s all the news I’m sharing.”