Well of Sorrows (7 page)
Authors: Joshua Palmatier
But her disappointment in him would be worse.
“Nothing.” His voice sounded thick and hoarse, deeper than usual, as if he’d been sobbing uncontrollably for hours. Or as if he’d been shouting. “Nothing happened.”
His mother’s hand began rubbing his shoulder as she considered this. Colin could feel her thinking, could feel her debating whether to press him.
But then she patted his hand and stood, moving back to her work.
“Your father and the others have gone down to the docks. There’s a new ship expected today, and they’re hoping to get some work unloading the cargo. As soon as I’m finished here with the stitching, do you think you could run the clothes up to Miriam? She should have a few loaves of bread for us in return.”
She spoke as if nothing were wrong, as if nothing had happened. But Colin could feel her eyes on his back, so he nodded.
“Good.”
And then she left him alone, working in silence behind him. Slowly, the ache in his chest receded, and he could no longer feel the blood pulsing in his skin, in his throat. He found he could breathe.
When he finally rolled over, arms sluggish, body tired, as if exhausted, he found her watching him, her brow creased slightly in concern.
“All right?” she asked, her voice soft and calm.
He nodded, even though it wasn’t. He didn’t think it would ever be all right again.
His mother accepted the nod, and somehow that made it worse. She handed over the basket of clothes with a smile, reached to tousle his hair, but then caught herself, a fleeting expression of regret passing through her eyes.
“Don’t forget the bread,” she said.
Colin ducked out of the hut, paused outside. He squinted up at the afternoon light, the sun almost too bright, then headed off up the slope toward Miriam’s, moving slowly.
He hadn’t gone twenty paces when Karen fell into step beside him. She smiled when he looked up, then glanced down at the basket of clothing.
“Finally learned to wash your own clothes?” she asked, a teasing note in her voice.
He rolled his eyes. “No. These are for Miriam. My mother mended them.”
“Oh.” Karen hesitated, then added, “Mind if I join you?” Colin answered her with a confused look and she laughed.
“I’m headed that way anyway,” she said. “We may as well walk together, right?”
Colin shrugged. “I guess.” He didn’t want to deal with Karen. Not now.
Karen gave him a questioning look. “Is there anything wrong? You seem . . . different somehow.”
“Different from what?”
“I don’t know. Different from when we crashed into each other by the stream.”
Colin blushed. “We’ve seen each other since then.”
“I know,” Karen said. “I’ve seen you watching me.”
The blush suddenly deepened, and Colin found he couldn’t speak.
Karen grinned. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve been watching you as well. Down on the beach, practicing with your sling, and here in Lean-to when you helped your father and his friends build the community oven, and dig the plot for the garden, and any of a hundred other small things. You’re pretty good with the sling.”
Colin ducked his head, but not because of the compliment. He thought of Walter writhing on the ground instead. “Not that good.”
“That’s not what my dad says.” She eyed him from the side. They’d almost reached Miriam’s tent. “You usually bring back at least one kill every time you go hunting. That’s something to be proud of.”
Colin was about to respond when a voice he recognized—a voice that filled him with dread—barked, “That’s him! That’s the bastard who attacked me!”
Colin spun, Karen turning beside him. He saw Walter almost instantly, noticed the two guardsmen in the Carrente crest a moment later. Seeing the Armory in the middle of Lean-to, where they’d never dared enter before, sent a shock down through his spine and froze his feet in place. Seeing the pure hatred on Walter’s face made his heart shudder.
His only thought was that he’d left his sling back in the hut. Karen raised a hand to shade her eyes. “What’s the Armory doing here?”
Colin didn’t answer. Before either of the Armory guardsmen moved, he dropped the basket of clothes and turned to run, but slammed into the chest of one of the guardsmen who’d come up behind them, the man’s hand reaching out and closing over Colin’s arm as he reeled away.
“Hold on now,” the guardsman said, voice hard, like stone. “Where do you think you’re going?” Tightening his grip, he pushed Colin forward, heading down between the tents and shacks toward Walter and the others.
“Colin, what’s going on?” Karen asked.
“What’s going on,” one of the guardsmen said as he brushed past Karen, “is that this little squatter is under arrest.”
“What for?” Karen shouted, the outrage in her voice layered beneath the growing fear. She tried to push forward, but the guardsmen shoved her back. People had emerged from the hovels on all sides at the commotion, mostly women and children, all of them with expressions of doubt and disgust, most of them family members of guildsmen.
“For attacking the Proprietor’s son and his associates,” the last guard shouted over his shoulder as they shoved their way through the gathering throng.
Colin twisted around in the guardsman’s grip. “Tell my father!” The guardsman shook him, forced him to stumble. “Karen, get my father!”
And then he stood before Walter, the Proprietor’s son still dirty from their encounter that morning. Hatred burned in Walter’s eyes, in the tightly controlled muscles of his face.
Then, without warning, he punched Colin in the gut, the fluid pain so intense Colin folded over Walter’s fist with a gasp, tears coming immediately to his eyes. The denizens of Lean-to cried out in protest, but the voices were muffled, lost in the pounding of blood in Colin’s ears.
Walter leaned forward, his other hand on Colin’s shoulder. “That was for me,” he breathed. He drew back to punch Colin again, but the Armory guardsman behind him grabbed his shoulder and pulled him away.
Walter struggled, but the man holding Colin glared and saidsoftly, “That’s enough of that.” His grip on Colin’s arm had relaxed, but not enough for Colin to even think about escaping.
He motioned to the other guardsmen, and they began wending their way out of Lean-to.
“Where are you taking him?” Karen shouted from behind. “To Sartori,” the guard answered. “To the penance locks!” Colin twisted around in the guardsman’s hand, struggling to see Karen.
His last sight, before the crowd of Lean-to settlers blocked her from view, was of her squatting to retrieve the clothes and the basket from the ground, her eyes a mixed blaze of anger and terror.
3
OM HARTEN WATCHED FROM THE BACK OF THE CROWD of desperate men and women from Lean-to as
Tradewind
pulled into port with its sails whuffling in the wind from the ocean, his arms crossed over his chest. Men in the rigging and on the deck of the ship called to those on the docks as the trade ship dropped anchor in the bay. With a sharp command from Sartori’s men, boats were dispatched from the docks. The
Tradewind
’s hull was too deep for it to draw up to the docks themselves. Tom knew that Sartori intended for the bay to be dug eventually, deepened so that the ships with larger hulls could be berthed at the wharf, but for now, anything that sat too low in the water remained out in the channel between Portstown and the Strand.
At the thought of Sartori, Tom’s eyes skipped over the boats rowing out to meet the
Tradewind
and picked the pampered, primped, and vested Proprietor out of the throngs of dockworkers, tradesmen, and Armory that lined the wharf. He stood at the end of the longest dock, surrounded by his first son, Sedric, two of the more prominent merchantmen of Portstown, servants, and a few of the Armory guardsmen. Sartori spoke to the merchants, but they were far too distant for Tom to pick out any words, even without the gusting wind blowing in his face.
The rest of the Armory were arranged around the edges of the wharf and were even now casting black looks in the direction of Tom and the rest of those from Lean-to, their hands resting on the pommels of their swords or the handles of their pikes.
“There’s more Armory on guard today than usual,” Sam said as he and Paul sidled up to Tom on the right.
Without taking his eyes off the guardsmen, Tom answered, “This is more than just a trade ship bearing supplies. Something else is going on.”
“What?” Paul asked.
Tom shrugged. “If I knew, I’d have warned everyone to stay away from the wharf. The Armory doesn’t look like they’re in a forgiving mood.”
Sam shifted nervously, picking up on Tom’s unease. “What could warrant such a heavy guard?”
“I don’t think it’s a what, but a who.” Tom motioned toward Sartori with his chin. “Sartori is here in person, along with his son and two of the merchantmen. I think they’re waiting to meet someone.”
Sam’s eyebrows rose. “One of the nobility? One of the significant Family members, rather than the offshoots we’ve been getting around here all summer?”
“Perhaps.” The thought sent a chill through Tom’s skin and he shivered. “Where’s Shay?” he said suddenly, voice sharp.
“Over there, closer to the main dock.”
Tom craned his neck to peer over the restless crowd, catching sight of Shay. He was surrounded by other members of Lean-to . . . but not those from the guilds. These were men from the prison ships, the ruffians and troublemakers who hadn’t made an effort to fit into Portstown, their faces scarred, unshaven, their clothes worn and tattered. Shay watched the dock and the boats like a hawk, eyes narrowed, his expression black. Everyone around him fidgeted uneasily, glancing sharply left and right, taking in the guardsmen. Tom scanned the rest of the restless crowd and realized it was mostly composed of men like those near Shay. Angry men. Dangerous men.
Like Shay himself, he suddenly realized.
He frowned, turned to catch Paul and Sam’s gazes. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.”
Out in the bay, boats had been lowered from the
Tradewind,
men dropping down to where they rocked in the waves. They broke away, oars plying the waves, and passed the boats that Sartori had sent out for the cargo.
As the lead boat drew nearer, Tom’s eyes narrowed. Someone in a blood red vest and a white wig sat in the middle of the boat. Two much younger gentlemen sat beside him, in brown vests.
“Who is he?” Paul asked.
“One of the West Wind Trading Company’s men, based on the color of his vest. Not one of the nobility, but close enough to be within spitting distance.” He resisted the urge to actually spit to the side with difficulty. Ana had been after him about it lately. Colin had picked up the habit.
He couldn’t help a small smile. Then he nodded to the left. “Let’s move closer to the main dock. I want to see this trader.”
And he wanted to be closer to Shay and his men.
They stepped out of the main throng of people, now pushing forward as the boat carrying the Company representative reached the dock. Men helped him up from the boat itself, and hands were shaken, introductions made.
When they turned, Sartori motioning for the tradesman to accompany him down the dock, the people of Lean-to surged forward.
“Sartori! Proprietor! We need work! We need food!”
“Please, sir!” a woman cried. “I need to feed my children!”
“Let us help unload the ship!”
Sartori frowned but otherwise ignored everyone. As he neared the end of the dock, he motioned to the Armory men, who pushed forward, those gathered pushing back. As Tom, Paul, and Sam skirted the outer edges, coming up behind the group near Shay and his men, Tom realized he could smell the desperation of the crowd, rank like old sweat, and thicker than usual.
“Fall back!” one of the guardsmen bellowed. “Fall back and let the Proprietor through!”
When no one moved, when the group pushed forward even further instead, the guard growled, hand falling to the pommel of his sword. The rest of the Armory closed in, shoving the people back roughly. A woman cried out, and Tom tensed. More people began pressing in from behind, bodies crushing against him, pushing him forward. He fought back, struggled to keep room between himself and the men in front of him, to keep Shay in sight.
“You have no right!” a man bellowed—one of Shay’s men—his voice pleading, cracking with wildness, with an ugliness that began to infect the crowd. “We’re people of Andover, we’re from Families of the Court! You can’t do this to us!”
Sartori had reached the edge of the crowd. “Arten!”
The commander of the Armory unit, grappling with two men trying to push forward simultaneously, barked, “Yes, sir.”
“I want this wharf cleared. Now.”
“Very well, sir.” Broad of shoulder, with a face etched with three long visible scars, Arten shoved the men before him back, hard, the two stumbling into those behind them with startled outcries. They were caught by the crowd, but the Armory commander didn’t wait for the angry reaction that would follow.
He drew his sword, raised the blade above his head, and signaled the pikemen forward.
A cold dagger of fear sliced down into Tom’s core, a bitter taste flooding his mouth.
“Diermani’s balls,” Paul gasped. “ This is getting out of control.”
And then Sam’s hand latched onto Tom’s arm. “Tom! Shay and his men!”
Tom’s gaze snapped toward Shay, toward the large group of men who had shoved their way to the front of the crowd and were now standing at the edge of the wharf, directly in front of the leading Armory guardsmen. A wide swath of empty space stood between those from Lean-to and the cluster of Armory now surrounding Sartori, his son, and the tradesmen and assistants, a space defined by the pikemen and the reach of their pikes, the Armory tightening ranks. He saw Shay motion to men on the other side of Sartori, the Proprietor standing obliviously, arrogantly, behind Arten. He saw Shay’s men beginning to surge forward—
And he saw the knife Shay held in one hand, the blades all of his men wielded.
He leaped forward, roared, “No!” but his voice was drowned out in the sudden uproar from the mob. Women screamed, men bellowed in wordless defiance, and Arten and the Armory men shifted stance with a stamp of boots on the wooden planks of the wharf, forming a protective wall of metal and blades around Sartori and his entourage. Pikes were lowered, the hafts settling between the shoulders of the men carrying swords. Tom fought forward, fought toward Shay, everyone in the mob trying to move in a hundred different directions at once, half retreating, half rushing toward the dock, toward the guards. Someone’s elbow caught Tom in the ribs. Someone else jabbed him in the small of the back. Sam struggled to his right, the bulkier Paul beside him, his face suffused a startling red with anger.
Then the crowd heaved, like a swell on the ocean, everyone rolling to the side. Those in the front, including Shay’s men, staggered into the space between those from Lean-to and those from the Armory. One of Shay’s men, knife still at his side, stumbled—
And impaled himself on one of the pikes.
The man gasped, blood forming a bubble on his lips before it burst, speckling his chin, his shirt. A look of shock crossed over the pikeman’s face, over the two guardsmen on either side of him.
Arten’s face shuttered closed. Tom caught a flicker of horror, of regret, before all of that was smothered by a horrid resignation.
Tom stilled, breathed in the scent of blood mixed with the salt of the ocean, could almost taste it.
Shay’s man raised a shaking hand to the shaft jutting out of his chest, to the blood that had begun to soak into his shirt. He looked up at the guardsman who held the pike, eyes pleading, almost confused.
Then he sagged forward, the knife he held in his other hand dropping to the ground beside him, his knees giving way. He fell forward until his knees hit the ground, bearing the pike down with him, then halted, the pike itself holding him upright.
Except for the blood, for the blade jutting out from his back, he could have been praying.
Everyone stilled, breaths drawn and held. Tom used the moment of hesitation to grab the men in front of him by the shoulders and haul them back, stepping into the space between them, sliding forward to within a few paces of Shay, the man’s face red with rage.
Then the moment of stillness broke.
In a single heartbeat, the space between Shay’s men and the Armory closed, Shay bellowing, “For the Avezzano! For the Family!” Knives slashed downward; swords were raised. The pikeman kicked the dead man’s corpse off of the end of his pike with a jerk. Blades flashed, edges now slicked with blood, and Tom felt himself pulled forward with the tide, the men Shay had seeded throughout the crowd rushing the wharf in outrage, an outrage Tom could feel prickling on his skin, an outrage that sent terror into his gut as the mob overran Sartori and his entourage, guards and all. Screams split the afternoon sunlight, wordless bellows that sounded like battle cries as all of the tensions between those from Lean-to and Portstown finally exploded.
Tom tried to shove back, to retreat, but he was thrust forward. He stumbled into the man before him. The pommel of Arten’s sword slammed into the side of the man’s neck, and he dropped. Tom staggered into his place, falling to one knee, white-hot pain searing up into his hip as his kneecap dug hard into the dirt. He hissed and jerked backward—
And found Arten’s blade trained on his throat.
He froze, muscles locking. His heart halted in his chest for one breath, two, resumed with a shuddering pain. His gaze latched onto Arten’s. In their hazel depths, he saw cold, calculated death.
Tom raised both hands, palms outward, empty, and thought of Ana, of Colin.
“I came here for work,” he said, voice hoarse, tongue suddenly dry. He swallowed, his throat making a harsh clicking noise. “Nothing more.”
The sword didn’t waver. Something flickered in Arten’s eyes, there and gone.
Then the Armory commander took a single step back, sword still level with Tom’s throat, and turned.
Weakness washed down through Tom’s legs, trembled in his arms. He lowered his hands to his knee, the riot raging around him, the man Arten had knocked unconscious so casually slumped to the ground before him. Someone shouted a command, the Armory on all sides responding, boots pounding against the wharf, but the sounds were distant, removed.
Sam appeared, knelt down by Tom’s side. “Tom, are you all right?”
Tom nodded, still shaky. “I’m fine.”
“Then let’s get the hell out of here.”
He grabbed Tom under the shoulder and hauled him into a standing position, turned and reached behind him to catch Paul’s attention. Paul held a knife at the ready with one hand, defensively, the other clutching his upper arm, blood seeping out between his fingers.
“I’ve got him,” Sam said over the tumult around them. “Let’s go.”
Paul nodded as Sam threw Tom’s arm over his shoulder and began shoving out of the riot. When they saw the blood staining Paul’s arm, they cursed, the rage in their faces tightening.
They broke through the back of the crowd into the streets of Portstown, near one of the mercantiles. Sam dragged Tom over to the side of the building. They leaned against the wood, gasping, men and women running away from the riot around them, a few running toward it. Three Armory guardsmen pelted past, pikes before them; Paul hid his knife behind his back until they’d gone.
Sam wiped at the sweat on his forehead with one arm. “That turned into one cursed mess.” His breath still came in heaves, but he didn’t seem to be hurt.
Tom didn’t answer. There was no need.
He was just about to shove away from the wall and head back to Lean-to when he heard Ana shout, “Tom!”
He spun and saw Ana and Karen and a small group of others, mostly women, bearing down on him.
