She winced and swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know any other way of life.”
A bell chimed off in the distance and she groaned. “I’m late for work! Don’t cause trouble or the guards will skin my hide!” She turned away from me.
“I won’t!” I called back. “And thank you.”
She waved as she burst into a run, and I wondered where she worked. I’d have to ask tomorrow at school.
Now it was my turn to run. I had a pretty good sense of direction and based on the large black brick building in the center of the city denoting The Academy, I knew how to find Avis Apothecary. I just hoped I could convince the woman I’d stolen from to lend me more tinctures.
SIX
It was about a five-minute jog to the front of the apothecary shop. The window I’d broken was fixed with a new pane, the glass swept up. Guilt wormed into my gut as I reached for the door handle and turned the knob. Stepping inside, I saw the shop owner right away. She was talking to a customer, so I waited in the back of the shop. When the customer paid for her items and left, she looked up at me.
“I was expecting you a day ago,” she said nonchalantly, as she put some coin in the register.
I stepped closer, wringing my gloved hands together. “I’m so sorry. I—I lied, okay. I wasn’t from the West Side. I came that night from Isariah and my father was dying. The healer from The Academy saved him, but I wasn’t able to make it back in time because—”
“You got arrested,” she said.
My mouth popped open. “How did you know?”
She reached under the counter and pulled up a newspaper. It was open to a section titledSecurity.
There was an article about a village girl from Isariah who had attacked a royal guard when questioned about breaking into The Gilded City, and that her friend had cut off his arm. She was currently being held for questioning at the castle.
I was relieved it didn’t say anything about my curse, or my lineage, or my name.
“You knew this was about me?”
She nodded. “Put two and two together. Did you come back to work off the debt? You can start by dusting those shelves.” She handed me a duster and pointed to a large case of glass tincture bottles.
I winced. “I will. Itotallywill, but…you told me to ask you if I needed help, and, well. I’ll be going to The Academy here now and my father is getting a job, so he’ll have coin soon and—”
“What do you need?” she asked, and there was a kindness in her voice—one I imagined mothers used on their children, if I’d ever had a mother to compare it to.
“So, the woman in the article who cut off the guard’s arm was protecting me. She is a sweet old lady, and in return the queen took her hand. She’s in a lot of pain.”
The woman winced. “Where is she now, your friend?”
“West Side. At my…new house.” I didn’t want to lie to this woman ever again. I felt so guilty, and she’d been so kind before. She could have killed me on sight or had me arrested.
“Your father can take care of her?” she asked as she turned to rummage through the tinctures behind the counter.
“Yes, she’s been permitted to stay at our house for three days before she has to return to Isa.”
When the woman spun back around, she was holding three tinctures. “One for pain. One for infection. One for sleep.” My heart pinched in my chest as I took them. She held up a hand and grabbed one more. “This is for trauma. Having your hand taken is…well, give that to her if her mind seems to be out of sorts.”
“I don’t even know your name,” I muttered, overcome with gratitude. Were people like this real?
She smiled then, radiantly. “I’m Avis.”
Ahh. Hence the shop name.
“I’m Fallon. How much is all this? I’d like to keep a tab and work it off or pay from my father’s coin when he gets his first payment.”
She nodded and grabbed a receipt and began to scrawl the contents on it. The four tinctures cost forty coppers. I had no idea how long that would take to work off. “Add the window repair and the infection tincture I took before,” I told her.
