Inwardly, I wondered why Reed was not intending to go on to Eccleston with his brothers, from what Tessa had described. But I said, “It must be his age that holds me back. Every man I’ve ever bedded, I did not bring my heart into it, except Avery. And even him, at first. It was only a thing between bodies. I am actuallygood at ‘just screwing,’ now that I think on it.” I put my hand on Daisy’s head and scratched her behind her ears. “Alright. Just screwing then.”
“But no prick,” Tessa said with apology in her voice, “which to me sounds even better, but as Ilsit has explained it to me, it has value to some women. Maybe you can convince him to take his serpent out of his breeches eventually.”
Despite my fear for my life and the four of theirs, the uncertainty ahead of us, and our concern for my niece, I could not resist laughing with her.
62
NOW: KNIFE
Aweek passed. Dermid visited us for a few days, then Keir and then Evangeline. I found myself pining for a glimpse of Reed, and when I finally caved and asked Evangeline where he was, she claimed he was of late always in talks with Thane or scouting ahead.
“Why?” I asked her, nearly petulant, wondering if Thane had noticed Reed’s interest in me—however reserved Reed was—and was purposefully sending him away. Then I inwardly berated myself for being so arrogant as to think that.
Evangeline said she did not know.
The threat of Starling’s plot with Bertram and Gerard to kill me still weighed on me, and I did not sleep well. I wanted to confide in someone, but Tessa’s worry over Adelaide held me back, as well as Jade’s happiness, Fox’s age, and Ilsit’s loud mouth.
Before the dust road diverged for a bit from the Oberlong, Jade and I had spent nearly a whole night harvesting from god trees with Keir standing guard nearby. I would stand inside and scrape as much as I could, passing clumps of it out to her for packing into all thesacks we had. Whichever of us rode in the wagon during the day was given the duty of grinding it into its paste and scraping it into the tins. We had harvested as much as we could, as more of the wagons were draped with flower garlands day by day. At night, in pairs, we dispensed the tins.
Tessa had put up a fight over this, claiming it would draw more attention, but I sided with Ilsit, who had always advocated for doing it in pairs. Tessa made us promise to go about it as quietly as we could.
Evangeline told her brothers about the garland code, and wagons’ numbers were reported to us throughout that first week after Griston. We tried to memorize them. Jade had said she wished we had a book and a reed pen to write them down, and I found myself guilty at keeping my copy ofThe Life of Unahidden even from them. But I could not risk feeling that loss again.
Don’t lose hope.
If I somehow lost a second book of Una, I knew I would lose hope.
All of us had started wearing our aprons everywhere we went. Women would walk past us and slip empty tins into the pockets. Jade once came back from emptying the latrine bucket sounding like a rather unpleasant wind chime when she moved, so many women had greeted her good morning and slipped their tins into her pockets.
A week’s journey from Griston, as our campground and the ones around us were made ready for sleep, Ilsit and I set out with the tins. There were fourteen wagons with garlands we planned to visit that were all at the back of the caravan. The moon was nearly fully in bloom again, a fat, pale rose in the sky beaming down on us.
I dithered about whether or not to wait for it to wane again, but Ilsit argued that it would only get lower and brighter until another nearly week and a half had gone.
“Look, we’re breaking it up into sections, right?” she reasoned. “We’re doing it by rows? We did the two hundreds a few nights ago.Then the three hundreds. It’s just twenty or so every night, not the whole camp. Tonight we have a handful of folk in the five hundreds. It’ll be quick.”
I agreed with her that this was the least amount of moonlight we’d have for a while, and we carried on. When we reached the last rows of the numbered wagons, with only a small unit of soldiers camping behind them, she suggested we split up and deliver the last two tins separately so as to speed our work.
“I’ve got five hundred and seventy-two. You take five hundred and twelve? I’ll jaunt down to seventy-two and find you at twelve in a little bit.”
Before I could object, she patted me on the arm and strode off. I was afraid to call after her and draw attention. I creeped along the rows of wagons. Many people chose to sleep on the ground in bedrolls beneath them, opting for the fresh night air and the room, even as autumn was drawing to a close. Most wagons were full of trunks, and some, like ours, had poultry and small animals inside.
When I found five hundred and twelve, not only recognizing it for the pitch-painted numbers but also for the scraggly aster chain hanging from the driver’s seat, I squatted next to the wheel well of the front left wheel and put the tin of paste in between some of the spokes. I moved slowly so as not to disturb the nearby bodies in bedrolls. Then I straightened and began to turn in place, looking for Ilsit. I reasoned with myself that it might take her longer to return to me.
As I was biding my time, looking up at the asymmetrically exposed moon, pockmarked but beautiful, I felt a knife against my ribs. Before I could cry out, a strong hand wrapped around my throat.
“Don’t call for help or I will slip this blade in you.”
I wanted to call out, but no sound came from me.
“Do you remember Gayla?”
I could tell it was a man, and he was big and strong. I decidedthat it must be Gerard. Bertram was also a fit man, but his anger always boiled over when he spoke to me, whereas I noticed that Gerard, while a more religious man, was less spirited and more calculating.
“I do not,” I tried to say.
“Well, I suppose witches kill so many babes, they forget about it. Do you remember the crime that got you arrested?”
I went entirely still.
