And now it’s stolen my father, too.
SIX MONTHS LATER
CHAPTER 1
CALLYN
I’ve been staring out at the night for hours, daring the dawn to keep its distance, but the first hint of purple appears along the crest of the mountain anyway. When I was a little girl, my mother used to say that if you could throw a stone high enough, it would fly over the mountaintops and land in Emberfall.
She also used to say that if you were lucky, it would land on the head of one of their soldiers and crush their skull, but that was back when Emberfall was an enemy of Syhl Shallow.
I tried and tried when I was a child, but I never threw a rock over the mountain. Not even when rage over my mother’s death propelled the rocks high into the sky.
I rub my hand over her pendant. I don’t know why I’m thinking of my mother. She’s been dead for years.
Any latent rage should be directed at my father, anyway. He’s the one who left us with this mess. It’s been six months, and there’s no coming back from the dead. From what I hear, not even the king’s awful magic can makethathappen.
The moon hangs high over the trees, making the frozen branches glisten, turning the ground between the house and the barn into a wide swath of crystalline white. A few inches of snow fell at dusk last night, keeping away any customers Nora and I might have had for the bakery.
The weather didn’t keep the tax collector away.
I glance at the half-crumpled paper with what we owe printed neatly at the bottom. I want to toss it into the hearth. The woman came by carriage, stepping fastidiously through the late-winter slush to enter the bakery—which is really just the main level of ourhome. Her lip curled when the door stuck, but I haven’t been able to replace the hinges yet. She said we have a week to pay the first quarter of what we owe, or our holdings will be seized by the queen. As if Queen Lia Mara needs a run-down farm on the outskirts of Syhl Shallow. I’d be surprised if she knows the town of Briarlockexists.
A week to pay twenty-five silvers. Three months to pay the full amount due: one hundred silvers.
During the bakery’s best weeks, my sister and I are lucky if we make ten.
If the tax collector sneered at the bakery door, I can only imagine her reaction to the rest of the property. It’s likely a good turn of luck that she didn’t want to see the barn. I can see the wood panel hanging crooked from here, snow swirling through the gap. The metalwork is rusted and bent. Jax said he’d try to fix it when he had time, but he’s got paying customers, and he never likes to leave the forge for long.
Jax is a good friend, but he’s got his own problems.
As usual, I wish Da had made a different choice. He could have kept on hating the king without risking everything we have. He could have participated in the protest without giving the rebels every coin we had. Now, the small barn and bakery are nearly impossible to handle on my own. Nora helps in any way she can, but at twelve, she’s barely morethan a girl. I can understand my father’s desire for vengeance—but it sure didn’t put food on the table.
But if Da were here,wouldhe help? Or would he be like Jax’s father, drowning his sorrows in ale every night?
Sometimes I don’t know if I should envy Jax or if I should pity him. At least he and his fatherhavecoins.
I could sell the cow. She’d fetch at least ten silvers. The hens are good layers, and they would go for a silver apiece.
But if I lose my access to eggs and milk, I’ll have to close the bakery.
Mother would tell me to sell the whole property and enlist. That’s what she would have done. That’s what she always envisioned for me. It was Da who wanted to keep the bakery, Da who taught me how to measure and knead and stir. Mother loved soldiering, but Da loved the art of feeding people. They fought about it before the battles with Emberfall. She was going off to war, demanding to know why he wasn’t enlisting as well. Didn’t he care about hiscountry?
Da would counter that he didn’t want to leave his children in an orphanage just so he could die on a battlefield.
Mother said he was being dramatic, but of course that’s what she ended up doing.
And it’s not like he did any better in the end.
Even still, I can imagine Mother staring down at this tax notice, looking around the bakery and the needed repairs to the house and the barn. “You should have enlisted six months ago,” she’d be saying sternly.
And if I did, Nora would … go where exactly? She’s too young to be a soldier. She’d hate it anyway. She blanches at the sight of blood, and she’s afraid of the dark. She still climbs into bed with me half the time, after she’s had another nightmare about the Uprising.
“Cally-cal,” she’ll whisper sleepily, my childhood nickname soft on her lips as she winds her fingers in my long hair. She’s the only one who can make a name like Callyn sound whimsical.
She’d be put in an orphanage—if she were lucky.
Shewillbe put in an orphanage if I can’t pay these taxes. Or we’ll be begging on the streets.
