Torchlight

by Theresa Dahlheim

  He felt her hands shoving at him, at the buttons of his collar, and the thought of her undressing him was even more exciting than the thought of him undressing her, and the sounds in his throat grew even more urgent. He kissed her mouth, her neck when she pulled her face away, the fine silk cord that held the tiny teardrop pearl against her soft, sweet-scented skin. The drawstring knot finally loosened, and he gathered her skirt up in both hands and touched her bare legs.

  “Don’t!” she cried.

  “What ... ?” He tried to find her lips again.

  “Stop it!”

  If she says stop, you stop.

  He froze. He saw Hagan holding Miriam down, bending her over a saddle tree, telling her to be quiet as he forced himself inside her.

  No—he wasn’t Hagan, he wouldn’t do that—

  He was still holding Jolie against the wall. Pinning her there. It hung in his mind how easily he could keep her where he wanted her because he was so much stronger than she was.

  A heartbeat later he let go of her and stumbled away, breathing so hard his mouth felt raw. Hagan—I’m just like Hagan—

  But Hagan hadn’t stopped, and he had, and that was the difference, right? That was a big difference, a very big difference ...

  After a very long pause he said, “I’m sorry,” probably too low for her to hear, so he lifted his head a little. “I’m sorry, Jolie, I—”

  “Just go.” She was crying. “Go to Farre.”

  “Jolie—” His words broke when he saw her running out of the milking shed and into the pasture. His last sight of her was the flash of red from her scarf.

  He ran after her, but his eyes couldn’t make anything out of the blackness beyond the lantern’s pool of light. “Jolie!” He ran forward, trying to block the light from behind him, trying to see the pasture, the cows, anything in the dark. He spun toward her family’s house, a hundred yards away. There was a lamp lit at the window, but was that where she had gone?

  “Jolie!” he shouted as loud as he could, not caring if her mother or sisters heard him, panic clawing at his throat, turning in circles to find her, unable to believe that she had disappeared so fast—that she had disappeared. She couldn’t be gone, he had to explain, he had to tell her—

  Rippling heat rushed through his chest, and he twisted over a clump of grass and tumbled to the ground. His eyes blurred—or something—a haze of milky white pooled at his hands and knees, but before he really saw it, it vanished. He tried to get up, but tripped again, and had to endure wave after wave of dizziness before his mind and body settled themselves.

  He knelt there for a few minutes. He could see a little better. At least, he could see the ghostly cows dotted over the pasture. But Jolie was gone.

  He had ruined everything. Everything. She’d never go anywhere with him now, she’d never want to see him again, all because he hadn’t thought about whether or not she wanted to do it—he had only been thinking about how much he wanted to.

  But she’d been kissing him ... it had been so powerful ... she knew, she must have known he’d keep going, why had she waited so long to tell him to stop?

  You weren’t listening to her.

  Oh, God, he had to go. She had told him to go to Farre, so he needed to go. There was nothing for him here. Nothing.

  Blinking hard, he got up shakily and made his way back to the shed. His pack still lay on the floor of a milking stall, and it felt heavier as he slung it over his shoulders. He billowed his cloak out to settle it over himself and the pack, and picked up his quarterstaff out of the straw.

  He went to the door and looked out. The pasture, the house, the black and cloudy sky, were all dead quiet.

  God, he could not believe how hard it had been to stop.

  Graegor leaned on the staff, holding it to his forehead, taking deep breaths. His head had started to hurt and his balance still felt wrong. For a few minutes he thought he was going to be sick.

  But it passed. He had no idea how long it took, but gradually his racing heart slowed, his breathing smoothed out, and his head felt fixed on straight. He rubbed at his eyes, and his arm brushed against his shirt pocket, and the pewter Godcircle medallion hidden there.

  Since Jolie was gone, he had no idea what he should do with it now.

  He retraced his steps down the hill and found the track, and followed it to the road. It joined the main road to Farre in about five miles, where there was a town. He didn’t know if he would stay there for the night. Maybe he’d keep walking.

  He reached the town, and kept walking. It was winter, but he wasn’t cold. He hadn’t had dinner, but he wasn’t hungry. It was late, but he wasn’t tired.

  Chapter 4

  Graegor set the first of the carving knives to the whetstone and pressed the foot pedal to start it spinning. The dim, quiet kitchen at the back of the tavern felt especially cozy tonight. Spring rain beat against the small windows, and he could still smell the spicy chicken pies Rooster’s Table had served for dinner. They were popular in this neighborhood, and their appearance on tonight’s menu had kept Graegor very busy in the kitchen since before noon. Now, long after the women had washed the dishes and gone upstairs, he still had one more chore to finish.

  After ten days, Graegor felt that he had the rhythm of the place now. It was his seventh job in three months—if he counted as a single job all the days he’d helped fetch and carry for the vegetable farmers in the marketplace—but if all went well, this one would last until the midsummer Khenroxan horse fair.

  Graegor held the first knife up from the whetstone and eyed it against the banked fire’s glow, then rubbed it with a cloth and set it back into its slot. He grinned ruefully at the thought of his last job, at an upscale tavern just south of the duke’s keep. The wage had been good and the work easy—just serving and clearing tables—but the sharpening of the knives was a more sinister sound there. When he’d taken the job, he’d unsuspectingly walked into the middle of an ongoing war between the cooks and the servers. During the week he had been there, the head server had never stopped whispering a litany of doom, the dish-washer had threatened to kill him after he had accidentally shoved a mug rack into her head, and only sheer reflex had kept him from hot ash burns and wet towel welts from the cooks. He’d left in the middle of the midday meal after the owner had yelled at him for not folding the tablecloths correctly. It was the only job he’d actually quit before he wasn’t needed anymore.

  Rooster’s Table was much better. The wage was almost the same, and they didn’t even have tablecloths.

  As he worked on the next knife, he added up his savings in his head. Twelve silver ounces, ten silver pennies, six nickel ounces, and seven copper pennies. Wait, eight; he’d found one under a table today. It was a nice little pile. There was no reason to spend any of it, no room or board to worry about while he was here. For the first time, he felt like he was really in Farre, really living here, not just a vagrant who’d stumbled into the city.

  He finished with the knives, and he stretched his arms over his head. After several mouthfuls of water from the pump, he went around the corner to the tiny room that the Rooster of Rooster’s Table called an office.

  The big man was there, his grey and red hair and beard standing up on his head and face as he sat squeezed behind a table, sorting small coins and making notes on a ledger. The dog slept on the floor beside him. “Done?” Rooster asked with a quick smile between counting one stack and moving it.

  “Yes, sir. Nice crowd tonight.”

  He chuckled. “There usually is on Earthsdays. Best day of the week for me.”

  “Why don’t you make them more often?”

  “What, the pies? I would if the spices were cheaper.”

  “You could charge more.”

  “They’re not that good.”

  “Actually they are.” He’d only had two—one last week and one today—but they were the best chicken pies he’d ever had, better even than Pritchard’s.

  Rooster just smil
ed as he opened up another ledger. He touched his broad finger to a mark on a grid next to Graegor’s name, then reached to a shelf behind his head for a jingling sack of silver pennies.

  Graegor looked at his name in the ledger, mostly because he felt it was impolite to stare while Rooster fished out his daily wage. It was still strange to see “Graegor Lakeman” written there, even though he’d been using that name for months now.

  Surnames weren’t used much at home. He’d heard people refer to him as Graegor Wright or Graegor Aricsson a few times, but he’d never liked either one. “Lakeman” also bothered him, since it was so obviously false. But Rooster hadn’t questioned it, and neither had any of his other employers.

  It was funny. His parents carped about how city people didn’t care about each other and didn’t help each other, but city people did give each other privacy. In fact, quite contrary to his parents’ beliefs, most of the people he’d asked about a job had been pretty nice about it, even if they’d refused. They cared; they just didn’t pry.

  He wanted a real surname, though. Something that defined him, not his birthplace or his parents or their occupations. When the Khenroxans arrived with their horses and trade goods for the fair, he wanted to be able to introduce himself with a name all his own. But so far he hadn’t come up with anything.

  Finally separating one coin from the rolled stacks in the sack, Rooster pushed it across the table to Graegor, who put it in his shirt pocket. “Thank you, sir.” It was a generous daily wage, especially paired with the free room and board. “Good night.”

  Rooster opened his mouth, hesitated, then closed it again. Graegor waited, then said, “Was there something else, sir?”

  Rooster sighed, then sat back a little. He muttered something, then said, “My wife’s sister is up and around again, and she wants to come back to work. I’m sorry.”

  Graegor stared at him in disbelief. “But—but it’s only been ten days. The baby’s still so small.” Didn’t babies need their own mothers constantly for the first month? He was sure that was what he had heard the women back home say. It was too soon for her to come back—too soon for him to have to go looking for another job. “Shouldn’t she take a little more time?”

  “Well, she don’t like babies all that much.” Rooster shrugged helplessly. “I can’t keep you both, and she’s family, so I can’t tell her that she can’t come back, so ...”

  Graegor took a moment to make sure his voice would hold no anger when he spoke. “I understand, sir. May I stay tonight? Finding a room this late—”

  “Oh, of course, I didn’t mean—of course, stay the night. And tomorrow I’ll ask around and see if anyone else in the neighborhood could use you.”

  “Thank you.” Then, more sincerely, “Really, thank you. I appreciate it. You’re a good man to work for.”

  “It’s nothing.” Embarrassed, Rooster made shooing motions with both hands.

  Graegor slowly turned the corner back into the kitchen. Ten days instead of thirty. He’d actually hoped for a lot more than thirty. Just his luck that the sister-in-law wasn’t a doting mother.

  He unrolled his pallet in front of the fire and spread the worn wool blanket over himself, using his pack as a pillow. He lay on his back and shut his eyes, but then opened them again, already knowing it was useless.

  So much for the rhythm of this place.

  He slammed the heel of his fist against the floor. Breon’s blood, it wasn’t fair. Nothing he did worked out. Not one of his jobs had involved horses—apparently Farre had all the grooms and stable boys it needed. And none of the taverns needed anything more than a server or scullion, even though he knew how to cook a little.

  Doesn’t matter, he tried to tell himself, doesn’t matter. The fair is only two months away. You just have to be patient.

  Patience was not one of his few virtues.

  That made him think of his mother, who had always been patient with him while he was growing up. He shouldn’t have left without saying goodbye. Audrey would have told her his plan, so he knew she would be worried, maybe more worried than if she hadn’t known where he was. She would want him to go see Johanns, ask him for help finding a job, and the fact that he hadn’t would worry her even more.

  But he refused to ask for Johanns’ help. Johanns would do it as a favor to his father, and after leaving his father’s house, Graegor wasn’t going to ask for anything in his father’s name. And he couldn’t stand the thought of Johanns telling his father that he’d come with his hand held out because he’d failed at everything and had nowhere else to go.

  He sat up, because sleeplessness and hard floors aren’t fun by themselves, let alone together. On the hearth the coals burned deeper and deeper red, and the rain hit the small square glass window panes. After a while Rooster’s weight finally creaked up the back staircase on his way to bed.

  Bed. Sleep. It would be nice to spend some time doing that. He had actually slept well the last three nights, the first such stretch in weeks. But it wasn’t in the cards for him tonight—his eyes simply wouldn’t shut. He’d rarely slept well since that night that he’d left Jolie and walked all thirty miles to Farre without stopping.

  Jolie ...

  He couldn’t believe he’d ruined everything so fast.

  He’d dropped the pewter Godcircle medallion into a chapel’s donation box within the first week he’d been in Farre. But he needed to try even harder to forget about her. He was certain that she would be trying pretty hard to forget about him, and probably succeeding. He’d seen some nice girls here in the city, pretty girls ...

  No. First, he didn’t trust himself. Second, he was too distracted to concentrate on anything as complicated as a girl. Third, he was—now, again—homeless.

  Eventually he got up, muttered a quick meat-thanks, and made a ham sandwich. He was still hungry after he ate it, so he made and ate another one before the black windows began fading to grey. At that slight sign, he stirred up the fire, rolled up the thin pallet and blanket, and placed them back in the corner. He shouldered his pack, put on his cloak, retrieved his quarterstaff from behind the big table, and left by the front door before anyone else was up. He didn’t doubt that Rooster meant what he’d said, that he’d ask around the neighborhood to see if anyone had work for him, but he wasn’t going to ask Rooster for anything else, even small favors.

  There was a chapel across the street, its dome hardly higher than the bullnosed edge of its roof. It had no bell-house, but it did have a beautiful green and red stained glass window above the door, and its lawn and fence were tidy but for the wet green leaves blown across it. Graegor had gone to services there this past Godsday, and he now dropped a copper penny into the iron box at its gate to wish himself luck.

  The loud clang of the coin hitting others at the bottom of the box sounded very jarring in the greyness. In fact everything seemed intensified—the rain felt wetter, the compost bins by the alley smelled fiercer, the two lines of houses and shops down the curved street appeared perfectly focused and clear, even further and further away. All his senses felt keyed up, and the morning’s quiet was tense as a held breath, like something was about to happen.

  But nothing did. Yet. It was a strange sensation.

  He started down the empty street. He saw a tabby cat staring at him from a stoop, its eyes the bright yellow of tiny suns, and when he drew even with it, it came down to rub against his leg. He spent a few minutes petting it, and its purr sounded as loud as a waterfall. Loud, but soothing, and he started to feel a little better.

  Then the slam of a door up the street made them both jump, and the cat bolted. Graegor’s heart skipped, and he found himself crouching, holding his quarterstaff with both hands, turning a slow circle to find attackers—attackers who didn’t exist.

  All the scents of the wet city flooded into him. His eyes could see each facet of detail on every house and window and keyhole on the street. He could feel the echo of the slammed door, feel it on his skin like water and in hi
s bones like a tolling bell.

  After two slow spins, he realized how paranoid he must look. His flush of embarrassment washed away some of the moment’s strangeness—enough for him to straighten up, take a deep breath, and seriously wonder what was wrong with him.

  He spent the morning hiking around Farre’s northeastern neighborhoods, but not looking for another job yet. His obvious skittishness wasn’t going to recommend him to anybody. For a while he walked along the broken remnants of the city wall, sometimes climbing up to look outward at the countryside, or inward at the fortress tower in the center of the city, a long finger pointing into the clouds. He’d long since learned to use his quarterstaff as a balance point when scaling the uneven stones and vaulting over gaps, and he’d earned the respect of the Farre-born children to whom the wall was a playground. A boy had even tried to bet him a copper ounce that he couldn’t do such-and-such, but Graegor hadn’t been so desperate for money—then—that he had to win it from a child.

  In a neighborhood that he hadn’t actually been through before, he stopped at the sight of an obelisk standing incongruously between two new houses. He hadn’t known that there was another obelisk in Farre. The only one he’d known about was near the bridge gate, marking the old inner harbor. This obelisk was in somewhat better shape than the other—it wasn’t covered in ivy and moss, and he could tell from the cap that it was devoted to medicine.

  Had a gate to the city once stood here? Had Lakeland people come through here to go to market, to visit relatives, to attend Solstice festivals? Maybe far back in history, before Farre was named Farre, before Telgardia was even a kingdom?

  Maybe, long ago, this had meant something to the people who had lived here. But now the front and the sides of the ancient column were all covered with scrawls of words and pictures, in chalk and coal, from many hands. He could see underneath the scribbles that the obelisk’s original runes were weathered away after centuries of rain and wind and sun, and so whatever knowledge about medicine that the obelisk had been meant to preserve was gone. It was sad to see one of the oldest things in the city turned into a neighborhood message board.