“Kindly give her two more, sir,” the one-eyed man said to the army officer, releasing his grip on the man.
The man tipped forward and barely caught himself before he fell.
“Look, I don’t want to be cruel,” said the officer. “But we can’t feed sinners who didn’t sign the list. Or the dead. Good Rodwin folk who signed the list are who get food. It’s the nature of this whole enterprise, stranger.”
The Vyggian man nodded, smiled, and crossed his arms. “I’m a stranger to you, of course. I should have explained. Let me tell you who employs me. I work for Thane Sheridan, also a churchgoing man and owner of these transport wagons. Your army employs his wagons, horses, and drivers to carry most of your cargo and themembers of your clergy. He employs me to keep an eye on things, make sure everything between his business and your army runs smoothly. It’s our first night on the road, good sir. I hate to begin this way.”
All around us people were hanging on his every word. His voice was not loud or commanding, but it carried, had a weight to it. It was a bit raspy, as if he had just cleared his throat. His manner was not charming or supercilious, but his smile was calm, assured, as if the outcome might not matter to him.
“I see you’re in a bind, friend,” he said to the army officer. “Give the woman two more loaves, and if your superiors question it, send them to me. I’ll tell them I was a boor, a bully, gave you no choice. And in two nights, you can go back to giving her three loaves as she is allotted. I’ll come up with another solution, one that doesn’t create an imbalance in your books or inconvenience you. Consider it a one-time favor. I am now in your debt, of course.”
The officer stared up at the one-eyed man, lips parted. Then, as if he could not understand what he did, he called out, “Two!”
The same boy returned with two loaves.
I stepped up and held out my apron to him.
“Slattern!” a woman screamed behind me.
“Cheat!” someone else yelled.
All down the bread line, people were outraged, calling out that I must be the one-eyed man’s whore, that they knew who I was, the forager woman, the midwife. It was no surprise that I had whored myself out to a man.
“Disregard them,” came that slightly husky voice. “Walk back now.”
I looked up and to my right.
The man had put himself between me and the line of complaining folk, but I was on his left side—the side with the eye patch—and could not catch his gaze.
I felt his hand on the small of my back as he urged me forward,guiding me to keep going, keeping his body between me and the line of angry people.
The farther we walked, the fewer people had seen what had transpired. Hollers of protest turned into complaints of impatience.
I observed him next to me. He was again in that short-sleeved leather jerkin with the hood. I could see there was a small pocket sewn into the side, and again I observed that little booklet of his. It was tucked into the pocket.
“Is that why you did this?” I asked.
“Did what?” he said, still facing forward.
“Intervened. Did you intervene so you could swive me?”
He stopped and turned to me, his countenance without expression. Then he said, “Is that how you get what you need in life?”
“What if it is? Do you judge me for it?”
The Vyggian man smiled. “I would not. Nor have I ever judged any man or woman who earned such a living. But I’m not a man of appetites nor is there a need to offer yourself. I intervened because I don’t think it fair. Not because I expect you to invite me into your bed.”
“I wasn’t offering, salt man,” I retorted, immediately regretting my rudeness.
His smile receded somewhat.
“What did you say to him?” I asked. “The man who bumped into me.”
He reached inside his hood, scratched a place behind his ear, and said, “I told him to apologize.” He ran his tongue along the inside of one cheek and then continued, “That—and that if he so much as looked at you again, he would find himself with twice my own life’s burden.”
“I don’t understand.”
The scout pointed at his patch. “I told him I would gouge out his eyes. Both of them.”
