“I’ll be there. See you soon,” I told Brent.
“So, he’s a friend of yours?” Lochlan asked when I came back to the stall.
“Yeah,” I breathed, watching Brent walk away. Whatever the Employer wanted, I had to know. That sort of money would make it so I never had to accept another bounty again. The Employer would be forever indebted to me if I brought it back. Who knew what I could get if I delivered the mysterious object to him?
More shouts came from down the street.
“Probably some petty theft,” Lochlan said, but he still craned his neck for a better look. “See, the Nightsworn are coming.”
Sure enough, several men in uniforms were coming our direction, headed toward the commotion.
I pulled my cap down low and busied myself with packing up the rest of the merchandise with my back turned so I wouldn’t be seen. I hadn’t had any run-ins with the Nightsworn yet, but I didn’t want today to be my first. Fortunately, they had nointerest in me or Lochlan and strode right past while the cries at the end of the street grew more panicked.
“What do you think it is?” I asked, staring at the crowd gathering beyond the market.
Lochlan stood on tiptoe. “I’m not sure, but something’s wrong.”
More of the Nightsworn rushed past, followed by more people. My curiosity was getting the best of me.
“You! Aren’t you a healer? We need you!” A frantic woman ran up to Lochlan, tugging at his arm. “A child fell into a drain pipe.”
“Shoals, did they already drown?” Lochlan began running as well, the woman and me right behind him.
“No, there’s a grate at the bottom so she can’t fall into the actual aqueduct, but it’s too far down and she can’t hold on to the rope.”
We pushed through the crowd gathered around the narrow pipe sticking up from the ground. Feeble cries echoed within the pipe. “Mama!” the young girl was screaming, over and over. Her voice was shrill and thin.
“I’m here!” a woman called into the pipe, tears running down her face. “We’re coming, sweetheart!”
“How old is she?” Lochlan asked the woman.
“Melody is two,” the woman sobbed. “She can’t hold on to the rope.”
“How far down is Melody?”
The guard’s face sagged. “Maybe twenty feet. We already tried lowering ropes and harnesses, but she can’t support her own weight.”
“We could cut a platform and lower that,” Lochlan suggested. “Then she could sit on it. Or you could try a chair.”
“Yes,” the mother gasped. “Do it. Save her.”
The crowd worked quickly together, trying to cobble together anything to lower to the child, but anytime it was about halfway down, it would get stuck on some unseen protuberance within the pipe. Nothing rigid would fit.
My lungs tightened like bands around my chest. That little girl was stuck down there. A fog settled over my mind, so heavy that it obscured my surroundings.
I stumbled back, my heart thudding fast and frantic. The world blurred. For a moment, I wasn’t standing near a drain pipe outside the market. I was six years old again, barefoot on the stone floor of my family’s cottage, surrounded by sounds of slavers storming in, jangling their iron handcuffs and shouting words that still rang in my ears. Nora had yanked me by my arm and shoved me toward a trunk barely long enough for my tiny frame, even then. “Hide,” she had hissed before throwing a quilt over me and closing the lid. “Don’t come out until they’re gone.”
It had shut with a horrible slamming noise.
The air inside had turned thick and stale the longer I stayed hidden, each breath coming with more and more difficulty. The trunk’s wooden walls had pressed in on me so it felt like there was no escape and the trunk had become a coffin. Outside, I’d heard the sounds of boots, screaming, and crying. My father had pleaded and begged for them to release his wife and daughter and take only him instead, but the slavers had merely laughed. The sounds of multiple blows had come, and my mother and sister had screamed at them to leave my father alone.
I had waited and waited andwaited, long after the sounds from outside had disappeared. I waited until my entire body went numb from holding still so long. I waited until the silence rotted away my courage and the knowledge that my family wasn’t coming back settled in. That was the moment my fear of small spaces had been born. When I emerged from the trunk latethat night, I knew that I was entirely alone in the world, and the world was not a kind place.
I came back to the present, where the crowd was still gathered around, trying to save that little girl. Several men, including Lochlan, all tried to squeeze into the tube, but each one failed. The pipe was simply too narrow. The girl’s shrill sobs began to fade.
“Melody? Melody!” the mother screamed. “Can you hear me?”
There was no answer.
