Someone brushed against my side, the touch faint, and I lowered my gaze, aware of the threat of pickpockets, though my pouch hung on my opposite hip. Beside me, a girl made a quiet noise, an apology perhaps, and sidestepped. Her shoulders slumped as if she were trying to shrink into herself, to be unseen, a shadow.
The baker’s boy leaned against the table, addressing the newcomer with a hostility that took me by surprise. “If you don’t have any coin, get lost.”
The girl swallowed, her throat bobbing. Her clothes were simple and worn, her tawny hair greasy and dirty, indicating it had been some time since she last bathed.
“Are you daft, skell? I’ll call the guards on you,” the boy sneered, using the derogatory term for someone who lived on the streets.I gritted my teeth at the child’s words, forgetting my vow to complacency. A fire burned in my belly.
“The fuck is your problem?” I snapped. Excellent, now I was cursing at children.Aureus would be so pleased.
The boy gawked at me, presumably never having heard a lady curse before. Well, there was a first time for everything. “She hasn’t done anything wrong. Leave her be.”
As if on cue, the girl at my side sucked in a breath and, with a thin arm, reached out and snatched a roll from the basket. Before I could form a word, she fled, the beige tones of her old clothing disappearing amid the crowd.
The baker’s boy shot me a glare. As I had with my brother, I met the child’s expression, knowing full well I’d been wrong and didn’t give a damn. He was still a little prick, and the girl was just hungry. I knew all too well what that was like.
Disregarding me, the boy stood tall on the toes of his boots and scanned the crowd. I followed his gaze to a soldier, his attention rapt in the advancements of a street woman running a finger down his cuirass. The boy hollered, and I sucked in a breath. On reflex, I leaned across the table and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. The contents of a rounded bowl were knocked over as I did.The boy silenced, and a muscle twitched at his jaw.
Eyes darting back to the soldier, I released my breath, relieved to see he was still entirely distracted. The woman, some ten years older than him at least, spoke against his ear. She trailed one hand down his chest and cupped it rather blatantly between his legs. The man’s lips gaped slightly; he released a moan that was silenced by the noise of the crowd. The soldier would take little notice of anything so long as that woman entertained him. So much for being a protector of the people. Huffing, I turned my attention back to the boy.
“Stop yelling,” I hissed. The boy nodded, and I dropped my grasp on his shirt.
He narrowed his eyes and, without a word, pointed to my coin purse.
So that was how it would be.Fine.
I withdrew a single ferre and flicked it to him off the back of my thumb, scoffing when he missed the catch and had to drop to his knees to collect it off the ground. While he was distracted with his head beneath the table, I considered pocketing a roll for myself, but my days of stealing were in the past.
I quirked my lips, considering Aureus’s number one rule.Don’t draw attention to yourself.There was always tomorrowfor a fresh start and for following the rules. At this point, the day was already spoiled. I started off in the direction the girl had taken.
As I walked, I scanned the shadows. All children raised on the street knew that the light, the open, made us vulnerable. Only in the dark recesses could we steady our breaths and wait for the passing of time, until the pounding of our hearts settled and the guards’ shouts diminished. Then, and only then, could we consider our rashly stolen meal truly ours.
It took only a few minutes to find her hiding behind a cart in the narrow space between two buildings, a hiding place that would have been indiscernible except to those who knew where to look and had lived by the rules of the street. Internally, I checked off Aureus’s list.Don’t draw attention to yourself,and, as I slowly skirted the wagon so as not to startle the girl off, I mentally marked offStay on the main road, avoid alleys.
Kneeling just within the shadows, some seven feet from the child, I stilled my advancement. We studied each other. She was with her back against the wall and legs drawn to her chest, eyes wide with fright. Me with the gut-wrenching remembrance of what it was like to be in her position.
“They aren’t coming for you,” I reassured her. I nodded to the roll. “I paid for it.”
The girl’s pale eyes were a watchful cornflower blue. She held tight to her meal, likely the only food she’d had in days.
“I won’t take it from you. Eat. It’s alright.”
Hesitantly, she took a bite. Her stomach rumbled noisily, and with rapid breaths and unhinged hunger, she gave in to the need to sate the hollowness of her belly.
Sighing, I rocked back, sitting on my heels. I watched her, plagued by vague and fragmented memories of the time Aureus and I had lived on the streets. The images that came to me were fuzzy, like a fading dream.
Yet beneath that fog, there were the sensations. Those I could remember with clarity. The gnawing emptiness of my belly, the pinching ache of starvation. The press of skeletal bodies against my own, rasping with cough as the cold numbed me to my core. Counting my breaths in the dark until Mother returned for us. And through all of this, the one thing that grounded me was the reassurance of my brother’s hand. And Mother’s lullaby, which he would hum to me to still my fear.
When the girl was finished with her roll, I scooted closer to her, bit by bit. The rise and fall of her chest was steady, and her eyes addressed me with pointed curiosity. When I was close enough, I reached out a hand and placed it atop hers, offering a reassuring smile, for there was nothing else to offer her, and I desperately longed to offer something.
However, at my touch, the girl inhaled sharply. I withdrew, and she dug the heels of her bare feet in, scraping at the stone. She tried to back away, only to press into the solid wall behind her.
As if realizing she had nowhere to go, her breath began to hitch.
“I won’t hurt you,” I promised, a tightness in my chest as I witnessed the panic building within her. I worried my bottom lip, chastising myself. Each person held within them an innate response to what they perceived as danger—fight or flee. To flee was the safer option and what most chose. “I’m sorry,” I said in a low voice, defeated, as I backed up to give her room.
But she didn’t flee.
Statue-like, aside from the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the girl held my eyes. Like a cloud passing over the moon, shrouding the world in darkness, the blue of her irises faded. They took on an ashen tone, chimney smoke against a dusk sky. Her head dipped slightly, and her lashes fluttered; her knuckleswere white where she held tight to the cloth of her pants. As if she were fighting something internal.
