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“YOU DON’T HAVE TO WAKE up just yet,” Gil whispered in Ade’s ear. Sweat and the last torn edges of dreams were flakes of burnt paper sticking to his face. Gil blew across Ade’s eyelids, and the dreams crumbled to ash and drifted away. “But, just so’s you know, your mam and sister are all packed, and they’re edgy as rabbits.”
Ade was lying on his back, and Gil was stretched out alongside, his knees half over Ade’s, belly to side. And Ade wasn’t scared. It felt good, a lazy heat. He opened one eye. Gil’s face was bleary-close.
“Feeling any better?” Gil asked softly as he drew away, taking the comforting heat with him.
“Hmm.” Because no, Ade wasn’t exactly feeling better, but he was also not a total mess. His eyes teared up at the thought of Nan, and of Perrin all alone, but that was the worst of it. There was a fist around his heart and it squeezed warning, but nothing more. Ade could breathe, and the panic and the falling-away feeling were gone, almost forgotten.
“There’s more news,” Gil said. “If you want to hear it.”
Ade grunted a response that could be a yes or a no, and Gil must have decided it was a yes, because he said, “The Sharif are burning down the Stilts.”
“They’re what?” Ade jerked up, and every muscle in his body felt as if it was made of three-day dead meat, no spark of life left in him at all. His head was muzzy from whatever it was that the Grinningtommy had given him.
“Yeah.” Gil didn’t draw further away. He put his hand on Ade’s knee as though trying to give comfort, but it was more than that and Ade thought of Tabeth again and shivered because she’d opened up something inside him and he didn’t think he could close it. He was a split wine sack, red richness pouring out. Drunk on things he didn’t understand. Slowly, as though seeing someone else moving, Ade watched his hand cover Gil’s, pin it flat against his own knee, concentrated on the solid, dry warmth of it. Gil’s fingers were still wrapped in bandages, splinted together, so Ade pressed slow and careful.
Gil drew a hissing breath but didn’t move his hand. “Another letter arrived while you were passed out.” He frowned and gave Ade a look that was pitying, empty. Ade couldn’t tell what the pity was for. “From your father.”
My da. He’s back from whaling then. Back from the sea and the storms and the great humpbacks. At least Perry won’t be completely alone, but still...my da. He was about as much a father to the Onnery children as Ade would be to Tabeth’s little get. He was kind when he was home, and he brought them gifts, and money, and stories. And he was not often home. Even when their da was off ship, Ade was more likely to find him in the Ricklewick than in their house. He does not like what I am. He always looked past Ade and over his shoulder, maybe to see a better son.
“What—” Ade cleared his throat. It was sticky-dry.
“Here.” Gil held out a mug of water with his free hand. He’d still not pulled away from Ade’s grip. “The Grinningtommy said you’d be thirsty.”
Ade took it gratefully. The Grinningtommy was not far wrong. The water was warm, with a murky aftertaste, but it may as well have been the best thing Ade had ever had. Once he’d downed the water and wiped his mouth with his sleeve, Ade tried again. “What did my father say?”
Gil sniffed, and shook his head. “Not much. Just that the Sharif were purging Stilt-City. They say there’s magic hiding in the Stilts, and they’ll flush it out one way or another.” Because of Door and Tabeth and everything they’d done. People were dying in fire.
“Tabeth won’t be safe,” Ade said. They’d find her, kill her. Someone would turn her in to save their skin, their families and kin. The Sharif would string her upside down from the Levelling Bridge and let her die slow, let the gulls eat out her eyes. People would throw stones from the riverbanks, and more than a few would meet their mark. It was a black way to die. Even if Tabeth was a monster, she didn’t deserve to end like that. She’d saved his sister. Ade slipped his hand away, released Gil.
She couldn’t go back, and if she didn’t go back and hang, then more homes would burn. Ade pulled his knees up and covered his ears. I can’t think. “Tabeth can’t go to Pelimburg now.”
“No.” With his bandaged fingers, Gil carefully took the empty cup from the bed and set it down on a small tray. “I suppose she can’t.”
“What are we going to do?” Ade whispered it because he knew. Whatever they did, he would have to stay with Tabeth till his debt was paid.
Gil went to the door, opened it just the slightest crack and stared out. After a few heartbeats, he closed it again, and came back to sit at the edge of the bed. “Your mam’s already packed your bags.”
“I can’t leave.” Ade glanced at Gil, at the little freckles, and his sea-eyes, grey-green now, like the mood in the room. “Not unless Tabeth is.”
“You’ve paid her.”
Ade shook his head. “Not everything. I— I’ll know for sure in a month or so, if I have.”
“What are you talking about? I saw you hand over all your brass like it weren’t nothing more than paying for a loaf of bread. A lot of brass,” he added, for good measure. “There’s no way she can hold you to more.”
“She can.” Slowly, Ade unfolded his legs and managed to stand. He needed to dress, get his head on straight, and he needed to be ready because Ma was not going to like this none. Ade took a deep breath. “I gave my word.”
“To what?”
It was not as though Ade could just explain to Gil what Tabeth wanted from him. Gil might understand, maybe, and Ade didn’t think Gil would hate him for it, but it was still not a thing he wanted to talk about with anyone. He could barely think about it properly—talking would just make what happened more real. And it was real enough, and maybe Ade wasn’t scared of what he’d done, not now, but he was still scared of what his ma would say if she knew. She’d never forgive him—first for being with a monster like Tabeth, and second for whoring himself out. Ma didn’t hold with kitty-girls or boys or any of that. “It’s a knotty situation,” Ade said. “Is that enough?”
“Not by half.” But Gil managed a lopsided grin, his split lip still puffed and bruised. “Would you rather face your ma on your own, or do you want me to come stand with you?”
Such a simple offer. And if this were any other day, Ade thought he’d be grabbing Gil’s hand and just about hiding behind him instead of facing his ma alone, but he didn’t want to drag Gil further into this. Gil and the others could still go back to Pelimburg. Now that Ade understood what Ma could do, he knew she’d be able to sort is all. She’d make the Sharif forget, and Gil had his family and life and his card games and scams, and Door had a job and a twin waiting.
Ade was the only one who had to stay here, or leave, or do whatever it was that Tabeth wanted. “I’ll be all right,” Ade said. “Ma can’t kill me.”
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HE MET WITH MA AND Door alone in the Grinningtommy’s front rooms. The polished dung floor had been swept clean and a woven wool carpet dyed with greens and browns unrolled over it. The hearthstone had been cleaned and there was no trace of ash on the cold grey stones. Even the furniture gleamed, and the air smelled of beeswax and lavender. Ade supposed the Grinningtommy liked to keep herself busy. She was nowhere to be seen, sensible enough to stay out of the way of warring families.
Finally, though, he had to stop looking at the Grinningtommy’s handiworks and face his ma. She was scowling, face twisted with anger and fear and a host of things Ade couldn’t read, though they made him shiver inside. He had to do this now, get it over with before he crumbled. “I can’t come back to Pelimburg with you,” Ade said. He’d never sounded so sure of himself, even though he was quaking right to his marrow, even though he knew what Ma could do to him if she didn’t like what it was he told her. And she wouldn’t, but she knew Ade was an adult now. She would have remembered that he’d finally gone twenty, long past his leaving day.
“What did you say?” Ma was cold and bitter as over-steeped tea.
“Just what you heard.” It took all Ade’s courage to keep his head up and not hunch his shoulders. He needed to face her like an adult or else she’d never respect his choice. If he came to her cowering and trembling it would make it easier for her to treat Ade like a Hobling and drag him back home by his ears. He coughed to clear his throat. “I need to stay on a little longer.” Ade tried to make it sound like a done deal. No good if she thought he was begging her permission. “I’ll join you in Pelimburg as soon as my business here is done.”
“Your business. Oh, you’ll stay here, will you?” she seethed. “What fool mess are you in, Ade. What exactly do you think you’re doing with that sparked creature—”
“Ma!” Even Door looked whey-faced as she held onto their ma’s sleeve. “Ma, Ade, don’t fight—”
Ma shook Door off as though she was a summer fly. “I don’t know what nonsense you’ve got in that empty head of yours, Ade, but this is no time to start following it. You’ll take your bags right now. We’re leaving.”
“No.” Ade wanted to say more, but he was scared that if he did he’d start stuttering. That he’d break down under her stare and do what he always did—exactly as she said.
“This is your fault.” Ma grabbed Door’s arm and gave it a vicious little shake. “You’re the one who never listens to a bloody word anyone says, and now look at this—Ade. Ade, of all people, disobeying me.”
“I didn’t have nothing to do with it,” Door said.
From the frightened rush of his sister’s breath, Ade knew she thought the same as Ma. That at the end of the day Ade was still not doing anything because he chose it, but because was just copying Door or some rubbish. It bashed down his fighting spirit. This was all his family had ever thought of him. He was no more than a well-trained nilly. As long as he worked hard at their word, he was fine, but should he dare to have a mind of his own, well, then there was trouble all round. “I’m not disobeying you.” He breathed in the wax and lavender richness, concentrating on the clean smell rather than his own fear.
Ade pictured Gil playing cards, that day in the public rooms in The Mirrored Starling hotel, and how the cards had flicked between his long white fingers, how they’d fanned out like the red-and-white wings of some outlandish bird from the east. The cards snapped open, spread out, closed. They pulsed in time with Ade’s heart, and over the tops of the fan of cards, Gil smiled, secretive. This was a game too, dealing with his family. “I’ll be home soon.”
Ma stared, open mouthed. “Enough of this.”
Unease flickered under Ade’s skin, something about the flat tone of her voice. She was going to do it, he realised, even though he’d hoped she wouldn’t, that what she’d done in the Sharif’s building was just desperation and fear. She’d only messed with his head by mistake. All his life Ade had lived with the faint prickle of Ma’s magic. He’d drunk it in at her breast; it had been stirred into his food, scrubbed through his hair and over his skin with hard soap and cold water. Because of this, he barely noticed it, it was as much a part of himself as it was of her, and for that reason only, maybe, he’d not allowed himself to see what was happening to him.
The magic surged inside his head in a burst of white light, bright enough to burn out Ade’s eyes from the inside. One moment he’d been standing as tall as he could manage staring into Ma’s care-worn face, and the next, Ade was on his knees, hands over his eyes, his brains shot through with burning motes. A keening noise, like a dog that had been starved and beaten, filled the Grinningtommy’s house.
“Ma!” yelled Door. “What— What are you doing?”
She didn’t answer, and Ade couldn’t. His throat ached from the thin whining. His head pulsed in star-flashes. In the black-and-white flicker, Gil grinned over the cards, and the ibis rose in vast flocks from the wetlands, their wings pummelling the air. The rush of feathers against the muggy air filled Ade’s head so that he could barely think.
Only one thing was clear. Home, the voice said. Home, home, home.
Ade wanted to say yes, because he did want to go home. He wanted his own bed, even if all he had was a rolled-out mattress, he wanted to see Perry, to say words for Nan’s Long Sleep. He wanted to share a pint with his da in the Ricklewick and hear his stories. He wanted to be free of Tabeth and her price.
He wanted to go home.
It would be so easy to go. There was nothing to keep him here. These people were all strangers, and Tabeth scared him almost as much as Ma did. But it was Ma’s own fault, at the end of the day. She’d always paid her debts. It was a matter of pride for her, and she’d brought her children up proud too.
“No.” Ade put his hands to the ground and kept his eyes shut, not that it helped against the blinding light, or the chant of Ma’s thoughts inside his skull. With all his strength gathered into points of heat in his palms, Ade pushed up, away from the floor. He imagined the heat flowing through his bones, strengthening them, and he stood. And he did not fall. When the fire had burned out all his fear, Ade opened his eyes, and said, “No.”
The pain stopped so suddenly he almost fell down all over again.
“Ade?” Door looked from him to Ma, and back again, as if she couldn’t believe either of them.
“What did you do?” Ma asked softly, her eyes narrowed.
“Nothing.” He would pretend Ma had not just tried to rearrange his head and make him do whatever she wanted, and they would both pretend that Ade had not just thrown her off, shaken her from his back the way a dog shakes off water. “I told you, I’ll follow soon enough.” Ade’s throat was scratchy-dry and he felt unreal, vague and dim and not there. Maybe he was still half-asleep from whatever it was the Grinningtommy drugged him with.
Ade had just stood up to his ma, and for a moment had been his own person and not just some shadow Hob at her heels, dancing when she danced.
Ma stalked right up to him, near enough that Ade could feel the sharp puff of her breath against his face. “I made a mistake, keeping you,” she whispered through gritted teeth. “I should have taken all your spark, and tried for another girl. You’re wrong, and I was foolish to think you weren’t.”
Dust motes danced in the fallen pillars of the sunbeams, and outside in the willow a family of mynahs sang liquid. It was a sound of home, and Ade wanted the hush of the ocean and the clamour of the gulls and the sea-salt smell and the rotting kelp stink. He wanted all these things. His stomach ached as though he hadn’t eaten in months. This wasn’t how truth should have unfolded. It would have been better to stay home and stay small and at least believe he’d been worth something.
“I have tried with you, Aden. I have tried to bring you up respectable, to do as I say, to know right from wrong. And now this.” Her face was blurred; only her words came strong and hard as tree roots breaking through old black soil. “It’s that sparked little bitch, I can smell her on you, her spark all over your skin—”
Ade stumbled back. “I— I have to go.” He didn’t even know where to. What had he been thinking, daring to disobey Ma, and what was Tabeth to him? She was not family, and Door was safe. What did it matter if he broke his promise now—he’d done as she’d asked, after all.
Ma smiled.
If she’d kept her face blank as a new slate, he wouldn’t have even realised. Ade remembered a thousand smiles, just like this. Remembered thinking all the things he had to do, things that were always exactly what Ma wanted. A thousand times where he had acted without second thought, without question. If she'd never smiled, he would never have realised.
Ade backed away from Door’s panicked questions, away from his mother’s smile, and away from the that things she said, that moment of truth she’d let slip.
I should have taken all your spark.
And he ran.
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ADE WAS IN A PUBLIC house called the Scrivver’s Hole, holding on to a pint glass of the local brew, his fingers shaking. He didn’t even remember how he’d got there—what turns and twists he’d taken to have his feet lead him to this place. He’d tried to calm his head, sip his panic away under drink after drink, hour after hour. He wasn’t drinking now. His face had gone numb and he couldn’t even feel the mug under his fingers. Around him voices buzzed and growled. The miners were mostly at work during the day, but a fair few were already in the pub, filling it up enough so that Ade felt lost in the crowd. The smell of beer and sweat and desert dust and dry grass mixed with the porridge stink of the brewery and the burned fat of the daily special.
“That stuff will rot you brain,” Leorn said cheerfully. He sat himself down on one of the high bar stools, legs swinging. His patched flat cap was shoved down over his dark curls. Leorn grinned. Ade couldn’t figure out why the child was in the pub, then put it down to brain-rot, already started. What difference would it make after everything else that had been done to his head? “Will it?”
“That’s what my mam says.” Leorn shrugged. “And I’ve seen enough of yonder scrivvers trundling about to think she might be right.”
A nearby scriv-miner raised his mug at this observation.
“Anywise, it’s safe to come back now.”
Ade took a quick gulp of the bitter he’d been nursing for the past hour. It was strong, and there was scriv dust in it. An unlikely luxury. In Pelimburg, scriv was more precious than silver and diamonds and silk. Here, they breathed it in from the desert dust. Or so it seemed to him. Either way, the drink had hit him hard. He haven’t eaten yet that day, and he was wrung out from the Grinningtommy’s medicines and the fight—the struggle—with his ma. “Safe? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Leorn sniffed. “Give us a taste?”
Ade handed over the nearly full mug, and Leorn took a few cautious sips then pulled a face. “That’s ill.” He set the mug on the counter and spat into the dry grass on the floor. “Your mam and sister—they’ve gone. Caught a wherry back down to Pelimburg.”
A wash of relief so pure and cold it felt like diving into a winter ocean flooded over Ade. He wobbled on his stool. “Oh?” he managed.
“And my mam wants a word or two.”
“Does she?” Ade had already gathered that the Grinningtommy didn’t agree with his mother, but he had no idea what they might have said to each other before Ma took her wherry.
Leorn nodded seriously. “And your boy has been worried all day, pacing about like we caught him up and stuck him in the animal gardens.”
“My...boy?”
“Yeah.” Leorn frowned, then looked at the beer mug again before deciding he’d rather drink it than see it wasted. He swallowed the next mouthful down with barely a grimace. “It’s not that bad,” he said grudgingly. “Once you get used to it.”
“Pass that back, before your ma decides I’m turning you into a wastrel.” His boy?
Leorn was reluctant enough to hand it over, but at least he did. All Ade needed now was to turn a six-year-old into a drunk. He snatched the mug out of the boy’s reach.
“Drink up then,” Leorn said. “Before my mam and your boy have themselves apoplexies.”
There it was again—your boy. “Are you talking about Gil?”
“Who else would I be talking about. The redhead, he’s worried about you.”
Ade frowned. “But why is he still here?” Ade had expected Gil to get back on the wherry with Door, to head home with them. He hadn’t even thought of asking Gil to stay on in MallenIve because why would he do that?
Leorn responded by making big nilly-eyes “May be he’s all in looove.” He drawled the last.
“You’re drunk,” Ade pointed out. The feeling was coming back to his cheeks. And his fingers. The haziness from running had melted away, replaced by a bone-deep heat that soaked all through his organs, up his spine, making his head heavy. Everything smelled sharper, the sounds were clearer. Ade shook his head carefully, worried that if he moved too fast it would come right off. He couldn’t think about Gil now, and about why he’d gone and done this fool thing. “What about Tabeth, the woman I came with. Have you seen her?”
“She’s talking to my mam now. Unless you want them to make plans without you, you best swallow that down.” Leorn glanced around at the scrivvers, their iron-burned hands clasped around mugs of cold beer. “Besides, I’m not allowed in here, Mam says.”
The barkeep was already giving them odd looks. Ade rubbed a hand across his mark, scrubbing at it as though it would fade if he just kept trying, downed the last of his pint and thudded the empty mug down on the counter. The beer was cold and heavy in his throat, but even so, it warmed him up. It was stronger than the ale at the Ricklewick—that was certain. He stood to follow Leorn and somehow his legs got tangled up in the bar stool, and Ade fell face down on the floor.
Guffaws broke out. Dry grass stems prickled up Ade’s nose and in his eyes, stabbed through his clothes. He could smell traces of old vomit under the must.
A hand grabbed the back of Ade’s shirt and hauled him up. “One too many, lad?” said a miner. “You best take a long walk on home, if’n you can.”
“I—yes, yes.” Ade managed to stand straight, and mostly not stumble out of the Scrivver’s Hole and out into the sunshine. It was nearing sunset, and the Digs and Wend were coated in red heat and the smell of drying mud. He groaned at the thought of how far he was from the Grinningtommy’s roundhouse.
“The walk will clear your head, mam says.”
The light was blinding Ade, and he squinted and staggered. “Do this often, does she?” He needed water. Nothing had ever sounded better than dunking his head under river coldness, drinking it in deep. Ade swallowed, dry and sticky.
“Not so’s often,” Leorn replied. “But she likes her scriv-wine. She’ll have something for you, for your head.”
Ade didn’t think he’d be letting the Grinningtommy drug him again any time soon, but he hurried back anyway. Ma had left, and his hands were clammy at the thought. Has she left me a message? I didn’t expect her to just pack up and go, even after her using her spark on me and failing. He’d expected there to be arguments at least. Or that she’d send Door to beg and plead.
They drew closer to the roundhouse. Ade’s head was almost cleared now, but his skin had gone cold and damp, and his gut was churning. The beer hadn’t helped.
Leorn pushed open the gate, and waved Ade inside.
Tabeth and Gil were at the Grinningtommy’s table, waiting. Gil was playing at cards with his broken hands, moving slow and stiff, holding the cards clumsily between his splinted fingers. He dropped them when Ade walked in, and pushed himself up from the table. Tabeth half turned, her eyes narrow. “So.”
“So?” Ade repeated, like a trained mynah.
“You stood up to her, then.” Tabeth smirked. “Apparently all it takes to give you a little courage is to—”
“Why did you stay?” Ade half-shouted at Gil, so that Tabeth would stop talking.
He snorted. “Was I supposed to go? Sorry, didn’t realize you were giving me my marching orders.”
“You were supposed to go back with them.” Ade had gone cold, so cold, all the heat from the beer sucked out of him. He shivered, and rubbed at his arms. “Not hang around here.”
“And who decided this?” Gil snapped back. “Because I sure don’t remember any discussion.”
“Will the two of you have this little tiff some other time.” Tabeth yawned, covering her mouth with the back of one hand, then blinked at them like a surprised lizard. “Besides, he had to stay. Who’s going to look after him if he goes back? Your mother will take care of Doreen—”
“Who says I need looking after?” Gil yelled. His normally pale skin had gone an ugly blotchy red. “I’m not some fucking Hobling.”
“Then stop acting like one,” Tabeth said. “Sit down.” She nodded at Ade. “You too. We have plans to make.”
Both Gil and Ade sat quiet as scolded children. Ade folded his hands on the table and stared at them, not wanting to look at either Tabeth or Gil. He didn’t want to be able to see what they were thinking—least of all Gil, who had obviously gone mad. He had no need to stay here in this awful city. It was not him the Sharif would be looking for now, but Tabeth.
“You can run along and tell your mam we’re ready,” Tabeth said to Leorn, and Ade couldn’t help glancing up. He wanted to see the way her mouth quirked when she was angry-amused, see the fatcandle light glint gold off her thin braids.
As soon as Leorn left the room Tabeth shook her head. “Little pitchers...” A corner of her mouth twisted as she caught Ade staring at her. She winked.
Ade looked right back at his hands again.
“What are we talking about?” Gil had attempted to gather his cards again, slow and awkward. Only a week back the cards had flown between his fingers.
“We can’t stay here,” Tabeth said just as the Grinningtommy bustled into the room, bringing a tray of fried dough balls, bean paste, and a steaming pot of red tea.
“That’s true enough.” The Grinningtommy set down the tray and took a seat. She plucked a dough ball from the bowl and tore it open. “Word will spread soon enough that strangers are here.”
Ade wondered how bad it would look if he just started crying now. It had been a long day, he was tired, and still a little scriv-drunk. Ma had left without a word, and he was alone in this dreadful city with two people he couldn’t trust. Probably they’d all expect it of him—thinking he was soft and simple and given to tears.
Like the Hobs who’d had their spark taken.
His fingers trembled, and Ade grabbed one of the dough balls to hide it, burning his fingertips for the pleasure. I’m not like them, the ones who’ve been quieted. I still have my spark, my head isn’t left empty.
“So what do you suggest?” Tabeth leaned back on her chair, legs stretched out. She was tearing her dough into little pieces, and she scraped each fragment through the bowl of bean paste before tossing it back into her mouth like a performing mummer.
Gil hadn’t touched his food. He’d laid out a game of The Lonely Man’s Pleasure instead, and was sliding the cards one by one to the end of the table so he could flick them over, sorting them into suits. He didn’t look up from the black-and-red pictures. In the growing shadows, his bruises looked darker, his skin yellower. His mouth was puffy and split, and the dried blood crust stood out blackly on his swollen lip. His scalp gleamed through the shorn patches of hair.
The Grinningtommy chewed slowly and let them all wait. She washed her mouthful down with a sip of tea, and said, “We can’t have you close to the waterways, or with any of the people connected to me. The Sharif are all talking about how they caught themselves some prisoners, and how those prisoners simply walked out of their cages.” She paused and looked at Ade. “Just like they were magic.”
He shifted in his seat. “Weren’t magic,” he said quietly. “My ma is persuasive.”
“Sometimes,” said the Grinningtommy. “And she knows how to be even more persuasive when people don’t do exactly as she says.”
Ade poured himself red tea and drank the whole bowlful in three long swallows.
Instead of getting angry, the Grinningtommy just sighed and looked to Tabeth instead. “I can hide you. I’ve spoken to people, and we’ve found a place where you’ll be out of sight and safe. Safe until I get word from my people here and in Pelimburg that you’re clear to head back. Just let the storm settle, let it blow over your heads.”
Tabeth met the Grinningtommy’s level gaze with a curt nod.
The Grinningtommy had a regretful smile, like she understood just how much it pained Tabeth to be muzzled and hidden. That was how she had spent her growing-up years, Ade thought. Here, and it was no surprise then that the Grinningtommy knew her and her moods as well as she did. He wondered how close their ties were, what they’d decided together. It seemed to Ade that, like as not, the Grinningtommy had some inkling of what was between Tabeth and himself, that it was something they’d talked over and agreed on. All these people around him, deciding what they would use him for with not so much as a by-your-leave.
And the Grinningtommy would know too, maybe, about what his Ma had done when he was born. The thought was sour, and he edged away from it.
“There’s a farm where you’ll be going. It’s a little further south, and set back some ways from the river. You’re going to be orange picking, migrant workers, and the farmer’s a good enough type, but that’s all he knows. I’d have preferred to split you up, but this was the best I can do.”
“I could have sorted something out for myself,” Tabeth said.
“Could you?” The Grinningtommy raised one eyebrow. “For yourself, maybe, but I took the view that all three of you needed help keeping clear of the Sharif.”
That shut Tabeth up for a moment. “Yes, I suppose,” she said grudgingly. “Thank you, then.”
“So we’re to work on this farm for how long?” Gil was still awkwardly, painfully, flipping cards, not looking at anyone, one shoulder hunched up.
“Until I can be sure that the Sharif aren’t watching the wherries and the water.” The Grinningtommy plucked a final dough ball from the bowl, and stood. “And then you may do what you like.” She smiled thinly. “Of course, you’re welcome to go right now and try get yourself passage back to Pelimburg, and I wouldn’t stop you, but the best you can hope for then is a quick death and a crim’s burial.”
She was right about that. “I’ll do what you say,” Ade told her with a glance at the others. “And I’m grateful for your help.”
“It’s not free,” said the Grinningtommy mildly. “There’ll be a favour.”
“There always is.” Ade groaned.
Tabeth started laughing, and she slapped Ade’s shoulder. “Don’t look so down, little Ade. Don’t look so down.”
He supposed at the least, it was not as though the Grinningtommy would be asking him the same kinds of favours as Tabeth. Ade pushed away his tea bowl. There was no use crying over what had already been spilled, Ma always said. Bloody Ma. There was someone he didn’t want to think of any more. Maybe she thought she’d done it for the best, but Ade didn’t care.
It was done. He was done. Soon as they were free of what had happened here, he could move on, and he’d have time enough to think on a new path to take while he was picking oranges. Whatever happened when the Grinningtommy gave the all-clear, Ade knew he wouldn’t be headed back to Ma and her apron strings. That time was past. He had skill enough as a midwife to find work, mark or no mark. It felt good and right making up his mind, even if it was half the drink doing his thinking for him. It didn’t matter because the time had come to remake Aden Onnery into a person who walked his own way.
Aden Onnery who would play cards and pick oranges and live out of the shadow of his ma. Everything would be fine—they’d hole up on some farm in the middle of nowhere until the worst of the storm had passed, and then go back to their lives. He’d never have to see Tabeth again.
Or her get. Ade’s stomach tightened—too much beer and rich food.