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)
And besides, I’m a coward. Though I have flares of strength, they never last, because it’s not my true character. Even with all this gold, I would be useless out there, crippled by my anxiety and lost in the larger dangers of Anathos.
I cannot survive outside the wall of this village.
Mare wields that gnarled finger of hers again, pointing at me now. “There comes a time in everyone’s life that they must choose themselves over others. You have to do this now. It is about survival. Take the coins, buy yourself a horse from Mr. Brownly, and leave.”
“If I use one of these?” I hold the last gold dnaka up. “In this village or anywhere else? I’ll be turned in for stealing. Only members of the court can use these—and anyway, I’m not leaving—”
“You must go.” Mare’s voice lowers even though it’s just the two of us. “And someone who is capable of what you are is hardly defenseless.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”
“Sorrel.”
My name is spoken with such urgency, I nearly meet her eyes. And in the silence that fills the space between us, I feel a crushing fear that thunders my heart.
“I can’t … survive out there alone,” I protest. “I’m not strong enough.”
“So find yourself someone to protect you.” Mare nods at the coins. “And those will help you—the gold can be melted down. Its value is not in the imprint of the King, but the metal itself.”
“But what about you? Who will bring you food and water—”
“My sleep these days is so deep, I have to claw my way back to consciousness, and I have no thirst or hunger. Soon enough, I will drift unto the horizon and rest eternal with my father who loved me and my mother for whom I was a shining joy. I have had my fill of Anathos, and am ready for this. My only worry … is you.”
I slip the final coin back into the pouch, and as the sweet chiming is muffled by the red velvet, I picture the mercenary in the pub, the grip of his broadsword extending up over his heavy shoulder.
“This place leaks.” I look pointedly at the puddle in the corner by the boarded-up front window. “We should use some of these to move you to better accommodations.”
“No. You will take it all and secure your future with what I have left in this material world.”
I put the small fortune back into the hidden nook and re-cover the space with the board. “I’ll return with food and more medicine at nightfall—”
“Sorrel, I have never asked you for a thing, not even when this started between us.”
I return to when I first saw her in the market square a calendar ago. She was struggling to hold a loaf of bread and a gather of walterberries as she limped along in rags. Even though it was noontime, I stepped in and helped her, and was surprised to find her living in what all of us assumed was a vacant storefront. I have been coming back ever since.
“You are more important than this village,” she tells me gravely. “What you can do must be preserved—”
“I do nothing.”
Unable to stay still, I get busy with useless effort, unfolding and refolding blankets at the end of the pallet, rearranging the pitiful stack of wood by the fire.
“Come here, child.”
My body answers Mare’s call before my mind can decide whether I want to approach her or not: The next thing I know, I am sitting by her.
“Will you not ever show me your face?” When I make no move to remove my hood, she sighs. “I do not care if you are scarred.”
Mare is the one taking my hand now. Hers is so different from my own, stripped down to its component structures, the bones and ligaments stark under thin skin mottled with age spots. With her silence, she pleads more loudly than if she’d spoken further, but there are so many reasons I cannot do as she wishes, as she commands.
Chief among them is that I feel as though if I take the coins, I’m hastening her death.
And I don’t know what I’ll do in this village, in this world, without my one true friend.
Seven
A Trip Outside the Wall.
It’s very late in the afternoon when I go out the Gauntlet’s back door, and head for the guard towers and the bridge over our moat. I keep my eyes on the cobblestones, but sense the flow of villagers around me, their chatter, their sloshing buckets of water, their bundles of creaking wood balanced on their shoulders, the kinds of things that calm me even though they shouldn’t. I see the evidence of normal life as proof we’re not in danger, and that’s faulty reasoning—
“—’nother one, aye.”
“In truth? At what compass point?”