While Rose filled her basket and eventually left, I ruined the last of Pa’s ropes. I detangled the corpse and took off the cages. Once I gutted the few fish I’d caught, I loaded everything onto my groaning old handcart and headed to the village, leaving the dead man behind.

The wooden wheels of my cart creaked along the muddy path that led through Elderfalls, a village with too many fishermen and not enough fish. A woman emptied a bucket of scraps into the pigpen beside her hut, the air ripe with the stench of piss and poverty.

When I passed the iron-studded hutch to the cellar, a biting odor crept into my nostrils, but it was gone at my next step. Instead of a pit, Elderfalls kept the dead in a dungeon beneath its courthouse. We no longer released them during a full moon. High priest’s order.

“Elisa.” Thorsten dipped his head as he raked a flake of straw from the pile beside the stables. “Come to haggle with me again?”

I sighed and waved at my basket. “Only if you’ll take the coin I offered last week and four small fish.”

He chuckled, but the sound held a tone of kindness. “I want double the coin for the mule now.”

I clenched the rough cart handles. “Are you joking? We both know the animal is lame on the right hind.”

“Afraid not. All stablemasters raised their prices in the other towns and villages; why not me? We might be far out, but someone will find the mule. Temples are giving out coin so the militia can buy horses and mules.”

My pulse throbbed at the tips of my fingers. “Such a fuss, still, even though they caught the King?”

He shrugged. “They’re looking for someone… a woman.”

I’d figured as much, but that didn’t stop my heart from racing and a new layer of sweat to break at the nape of my neck. “What woman?”

“Can’t say. Heard no name. No word of who she might be.”

Still, a shudder chased across my skin, but it stayed the longest around my exposed neck, where my collar had been. On reflex, my fingers wandered there, rubbing, searching for the comfort of it, only to find it gone. Strange how the absence of something that had once made me feel like a prisoner now caused panic to settle at my core.

Where are you, Enosh?

My fingers itched to reach into my pocket for the stone Pa had cut from my collar, but I thought better of it. Yes, it would buy me a mule—a lame one, right along with a new set of problems. Even if Thorsten didn’t ask how I came by such a treasure, others would once he traded it for coin. Might even think I had more of it. And if that happened faster than I could escape on a mule with teeth as long as my thumb…? The way my luck went with mules, the old thing might just die underneath me halfway across the stretch.

I took a deep breath. “Just… let me know if someone comes and wants the mule, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Maybe I needed to offer my services as a midwife, after all? But wouldn’t that put me in even greater risk of being found out? How much longer until that woman the priests wanted had a name? A description? An occupation?

I needed to leave this place and reach the Pale Court, but how? Fear crippled me, making me doubt every idea I came up with. Then I doubted it a second time, asking myself if I was just making excuses, stalling to make good on my promise.

I’d tried to escape Enosh for over a month, and now that I had, I didn’t know what to do. What to think. What to feel. What did I want beyond rest for the dead that might as well never come now? Curse this devil, what did I feel for my husband beyond sympathy? What was this heavy weight I dragged around in my chest? How did any of this make any sense, given how—

The cart stopped.

A splinter drove into my palm.

I pulled back with a hiss, shoes sinking into the mud as I tried to get the wheel unstuck. Life had never been particularly kind to me, but had it ever been this miserable? Perhaps it was a matter of perception, and mine had changed after two months of soft pelts, sweet berries, and always enough food in my belly.

When I finally reached the house at the end of the village, I brought my cart underneath its thatched overhang. Inside, dried herbs hung from the rafters, scenting the air with traces of rosemary and chamomile. Dozens of little drawers lined one wall, each labeled with whatever it stored behind, from mushrooms I recognized to names I couldn’t pronounce.

But I could read most.

The healer lifted his gaze from a book that rested in his palm and pushed the spectacles higher up the bridge of his nose. “Yes?”

I cleared my throat. “My father’s tea? For his lungs?”

“Ah. Yes.” He placed the book on its wooden stand on a table beside him, then rummaged through a woven basket. “Has he coughed less blood?”

“He coughs less, though the blood comes in larger swells whenever he does.”

I trailed my finger over the letters in the book, loving the feel of parchment against my fingers. What if I offered my help to the healer? Not many could read, and he might need someone to sort stock or mix ingredients for potions.

“Are you a piss prophet?” I asked.

“No. There’s a piss prophet two villages over. I never studied the taste of urine during—” His magnified stare dropped to how my finger traced a letter, his disapproval so obvious in the arch of his brow that I abandoned my silly idea. “Your father’s tea.”

I took the pouch he handed me. “What do women do around here to find out if there isn’t even a midwife?”

“These grains right here.” Another shove on his spectacles, then he pulled a small bowl from a shelf behind him with two depressions, each filled with a different seed. “Urinate on both chambers. Cover it for five days in a warm place. If both kinds sprout with the same vigor, there will be a child.”

“I’ve heard of this before.” An ancient method for those who had nobody trained in the taste of a pregnant woman’s piss. “How much?”

“With the tea?” A smack of his lips. “Two shillings.”

I pulled the coins from my pocket, dropping them to the table with a clank. “I do this at any time of the day?”

“Morning is best,” he said as he took the money. “Your husband works the mines? Died?”

My husband couldn’t die. “Died at Airensty.”

“My condolences to you, woman.” He nodded, but his interest shifted back to his book. “I shall look in on your father in two days.”

And waste me another coin.

Pa could barely get out of bed anymore without choking on his own blood, let alone travel to the Pale Court, even with the aid of a mule. I would have to leave him behind to die. Alone. In a strange village. All because I’d returned.

And what if I made it to the Pale Court only to meet my end there? Lord Tarnem had held Enosh captive for a fortnight. For all I knew, the priests might keep him locked up for months, years, even. Maybe I would sit on his throne for a decade, watching my skin wrinkle while I remembered the day I left my father to die in a bed of moldy straw.

My heart sunk in my chest. I had to make a choice. Should I stay with Pa? Use the stone and risk suspicion? Or spend the last coin on good shoes so I could walk the whole damn way?

My hand wandered to my stomach, daring one circling caress, then another. And I realized that, for the first time in my life, I might have to do what was best for my child.

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Chapter 23

OceanofPDF.com

Enosh

Black spots dotted my vision through the haze of pain. I wheezed, but I’d stopped thrashing against the fire long ago, letting the hot metal burn my wrists and ankles as my weight dropped toward the restless tips of endless flames.