As I put away the empty tray, a sudden scream pierced the air. I froze with my hands suspended in the air.
More screams came from the outside. Yelling in many voices. Howls of pain and sounds of fighting. They seemed to be coming from somewhere above. From the Wall?
With my sandals padding softly on the packed sand, I quietly creeped to the door, then peeked through one of the many cracks in the wood.
The direct daylight blinded me, making me blink. I couldn’t see much without my glasses anyway. The Wall rose like a shroud of darkness some distance away from our shack.
I squinted, peering at the cliff face while trying to make out the caves and any shadows that might be moving between them.But it was no use. Without my glasses, I couldn’t see anything from this distance.
A blood-curdling scream rushed from above. Then something dark and heavy dropped onto the black beach. I thought it was an object—a sack of grain, a carpet roll, a piece of furniture maybe. Then the object groaned and screamed in pain.
It was a person!
Dark, thick blood poured from his shoulder where the man was missing an arm.
How did he fall?
More shouting came from above, then another dark shape plummeted to the ground next to the first. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. They tried to get up but dropped as if being cut down, screaming and rolling on the ground with their legs clearly broken.
Several people rushed to the injured along the beach. I hoped they came to help. But one of the newcomers kicked the injured man in his side. Bending over, the looter snatched a knife from the person on the ground, then quickly went through their pockets.
A dark shadow moved across my field of vision. This one was close, right in front of my door. Fear slammed into me like a fist.
I leaped away from the door, grabbing my tray and ready to strike the first person who’d come crashing through the wall.
The bracer on the door moved quietly. The door opened, and Timur rolled inside in his chair.
“Timur…” I exhaled, my limbs going weak with relief.
Still clutching the tray in one hand, I rushed to him and climbed onto his lap. I pressed myself to him, wishing I could crawl under his cloak and hide from this world and all its sufferings. I didn’t think, I simply sensed that he was the safest place in the whole of Ashgate. I gathered my legs under me and hid my face in his neck.
“Shh, my sweet,” he murmured.
His warm breath washed over the side of my face. The bones of his right arm pressed around my middle in a hug while his left arm glided soothingly down my back.
The shouts and fighting outside didn’t stop. Another thud of a body hitting the beach made me shudder.
“What’s happening out there?” I wanted to close my ears with my hands, then realized I still held the tray.
“Evictions.” Timur said, calmly taking the tray from me and setting it on top of the trunk by the wall.
The heartbreaking screams of pain outside cut my hearing again and again. My throat tightened from compassion for those who were literally tossed out of their homes, and my stomach hollowed in fear. Instead of pressing my hands to my ears, however, I wrapped my arms around Timur’s neck, holding on to him as if he were my lifesaver in the stormy ocean.
“They’re killing them,” I said in a shaky whisper.
Resting the side of his chin on the top of my head, he kept stroking my back soothingly.
“They’re vacating the caves that their inhabitants couldn’t pay for,” he explained.
It wasn’t easy to kill a fae. As high as the Wall was, they didn’t die from falling off it. Those tossed from the highest floor, however, certainly ended up with broken bones.
“A man had his arm cut off,” I remembered with horror.
“So that he wouldn’t dissolve into shadows and escape the punishment,” Timur explained. “One needs six functioning tendrils to use shadow magic. Iron clips on his tendrils would’ve disabled them in a less barbaric fashion. But that’s Ashgate. They do things differently around here.”
Another thud came, followed by screams of agony. By the sound of it, a fight broke out next. Looters must be fighting over whatever possessions the evicted had on them.
“What will happen to them now?” I asked.
