I took another bite of my bread, chewing slowly, staring down at my yellowed sheets and blanket. Theo had the long and short of it.
I needed to master that gods-damned whistle before tonight.
After a changeof sheets and eight hours of sleep, I was free until my next shift on the wall. I headed toward the southern district, practicing my three-note whistle as I walked to the door carved with an imperfect sun on its face.
I knocked with the back of my hand. Shuffling steps, then the door creaked opened, and my mother stood on the other side. Her pale face lit as only a mother’s does, seeing their girl. “Hello, night guard.”
I rolled my eyes and stepped past her. “Mama.”
“What?” She turned after me as I paced toward the small kitchen. “Have I got the title wrong?”
“It’s only been one day.”
“Onenight.”
I swiped a finger over the kitchen counter, bringing a layer of flour with it. I couldn’t remember a time when my mother hadn’t stolen from the southern district’s storehouse to bake illicitly at home. It was the only way she could get by as a single woman.
Her floury hands took hold of a chair at the kitchen table. She pulled it out, leaving pale smudges on the wood, then took my arm. “Sit. You’ll have some.”
I followed her, dropping into the seat. “No, Mama.”
“Yes. Caelara knows what the barracks bread tastes like.”
I laughed. She wasn’t wrong. “Unfair. Nothing’s as good as yours.”
She had already disappeared around the corner. In the seconds she was gone, my eyes swept over the space. In three months, it seemed different—smaller, less elegant. Had the counter always been so sloped? Had this table always wobbled?
She came back with a circular round wrapped in paper and twine.
“No,” I said again. “Not one already wrapped.” That was worth two days’ pay.
She shushed me, setting the round on the counter and yanking the twine. It pained me to watch the work undone; how many thousands of pieces of twine had I tied?
When she had cut the crackling bread and set a cake-sized slice in front of me, she settled on her stool across from me. She leaned forward, bringing her hands to clasp on the table. “Tell me.”
I couldn’t resist the wheaten round in front of me. My hands moved without thought, and then the bread was in my mouth. My eyes shut, my breath came out, and even my aching legs seemed to quiet.
When I came back to myself, she wore a small smile.
“You should raise your prices,” I said.
“And who would buy? Anyway, tell me.”
Right—she had asked me a question. A soft burn started along my collarbone. “We stood atop the wall, Mama.”
Her head gave an indignant tilt. “Don’t tight-lip me. I know that’s not all. Your memory’s like a trap, Eury.”
She thought it was my first time atop the wall. She didn’t know how many hundreds of nights I’d snuck up there. For all her watchfulness, she had never suspected I left at night.
“I saw plains. Endless barren plains, and then”—I swept a hand out—“a wide fringe of evergreens at the horizon.”
“Sounds glorious.”
I took a bite. “Until the sun goes down and you can’t see past your hand.”
Her finger ran along a crack in the table. “Better that than the bakers. Or the patrol.”
The patrol. They were thought to be the most fearless of the guard, running regular expeditions past the wall. They mapped what was beyond, sought out resources, searched for threats. They roamed, explored on horseback, perhaps even ventured beyond our kingdom into lands I couldn’t imagine.
