Finished, I send for Moonflower and then return to my room to change into a riding outfit from home. I add my story sash and a cloak to keep off the light spring rain, and slip out once more, looking forward to escaping the palace altogether.
My visit to the house of healing reveals only that the work continues, the overseer assuring me that all is progressing as promised. He shows me around the ground floor once more, and then ushers me out. The rain has left off for the moment. Still, there’s no sign of any thieves skulking about outside.
I walk over to where Moonflower waits. The boy I left to watch her happily accepts the pair of copper coins I promised him and runs away. I stand a moment, watching after him, and wonder if I might ride through the city a bit before returning to the palace, get to know it better, perhaps find someone I can speak to about the snatchers who won’t betray me to them. But Moonflower’s mood this morning is especially foul, perhaps because she’s a wet, finicky creature. And I’m not sure it’s wise to trust my questions to a stranger; not after what the shopkeeper told me.
I reach to unwrap Moonflower’s reins from the hitching post.
“That’s a pretty little mare you have,” a voice says from behind me.
I startle, which makes Moonflower throw her head back and snort.
“Really,” I say, turning on Bren. “You didn’t have to sneak up on me to say that.”
He shrugs, setting the folds of his cloak swaying. “Where’s the fun in that?”
I shake my head and murmur consolingly to Moonflower, who does not look at all willing to be assuaged. If only Bean were here; the animals always seem to find her voice calming.
“She’s my cousin’s mare,” I tell Bren, which is more or less true. “Also, she bites.”
He tilts his head to the side. “A good deterrent against horse thieves.”
I give him a warning glare. “Don’t touch my horse.”
“I thought it was your cousin’s.”
“Consider it our horse,” I say firmly. “And don’t touch my purse either.” Though this time I’m not actually carrying it. Instead, I’ve worn the story sash Niya made me, with its stash of coins and my bone knife magically hidden within it. I’d kept the coins for the boy loose in my pocket. Still, Bren ought to know I’m aware of his actions.
He laughs and sweeps me a bow. “I am but a thief at your service, veriana.”
I feel my face heating. “It’s just kelari.” Which, thankfully, can’t be conjugated to have a “my” attached.
“All right, Just Kelari, will you walk with me?”
I look at him sharply. “Where?”
“A ways, actually. Bring your horse and we’ll see it stabled somewhere it won’t bite passersby.”
I can’t help the twitch of my lips. He winks at me and then steps away, as if afraid I might kick him. I almost laugh, and am glad he’s not looking to see. I don’t think he needs any encouragement.
Bren strolls along beside me as we set off, and I try to ignore how handsome he looks with his hair tied back and his face for once neither smug nor smirking nor dangerously observant. I ought to be used to seeing handsome men by now, but the court nobles are all exquisitely groomed and far beyond me. Bren is well-groomed, but there’s a slight roughness to him. He feels like someone I might have met back home. Except he’s not. The way he controlled the conversation Sage and I had with Artemian . . . that’s not something I should forget.
“You’re taking me to see children who have been snatched,” I say quietly.
“A few, yes.”
“Is it safe?”
“For us? Certainly. If you want to keep these boys safe, you won’t ask them any questions.” His glance grazes the bruise on my cheek, a mottled purple, and it’s a testament to how quickly that story spread through the city as well that he does not mention it. He goes on, “In fact, it’s best if you appear somewhat . . . subservient. Meek. I’ll be your pleasantly violent husband, and we are looking to build ourselves a new home beside my parents’ house. Don’t speak if you can help it.”
There’s a hard steadiness to his face that tells me he’s considered these roles carefully, and chosen them to match what he expects to encounter. I dip my head. I’d rather not lie, but between the warnings I’ve heard of the snatchers’ ruthlessness and the fact that Bren can’t very well admit his own identity as a thief, there’s not much choice. “Where is this place?”
“South side. Not our friend’s territory, so best not to mention his name. It’s not that long of a walk, though.”
The south side would be the Black Scholar’s territory, and not a place Red Hawk or his men would be welcome. Interesting, though, that Bren has to leave his own territory to show me what he’s found. One would have thought he could more easily find something to show closer to home, and thereby avoid the risks inherent in trespassing.
I glance askance at him, and he raises his brows at me, eyes gleaming. I don’t like that look—not the mocking amusement, nor the casual intimacy. I turn my gaze ahead again. Better not to encourage him with more questions.
We leave Moonflower at a stable attached to an inn a few blocks away. As we depart, Bren pulls up his hood and indicates I should do the same. “It’s better if folk don’t note our features in passing.”
“Good thing it’s been raining today,” I observe as I tug my hood up. Even if it isn’t raining right now, there are more than a few people who have left their hoods up. We won’t stand out. “How long have you known about this place?”
“Just found it yesterday,” Bren says.
I frown. “It wasn’t raining yesterday. Did you not wear a hood?”
“I stopped by in the evening. It was cool enough to warrant a cloak. Why? Are you worried for me?”
What? “No,” I say, and find myself flushing.
He grins and brushes his shoulder against mine, as if he were my brother. “If you say so.”
I shake my head and keep my mouth shut. I’ll only make it worse if I speak. We complete the rest of our walk in silence.
We stop just outside a brickmaker’s yard. Across from the central building where the kiln burns rises a wide wall of baked bricks many layers thick. Bren rattles the iron gate while I stare over the low boundary wall at the half dozen or so young boys carrying bricks, stacked into piles of six and balanced on their heads. They bring their loads to the wall of finished bricks, passing them up to a boy stationed there who adds them to the ever-growing wall, and then go to fetch more. The youngest boy can be no more than seven. They are thin, their worn tunics and pants hanging off their limbs and their feet crusted with mud—though they are certainly better clothed than many of the children I have seen on the streets. They work silently, uncomplainingly, but there’s a hollowness to their gazes that unsettles me.
Bren rattles the iron gate again, calling out, and a man pokes his head out of the kiln building. He waves and hurries over to greet us. He is short and lean as a whip, his mustache thick and his hair threaded with gray.
“You’ve come back, kel! Welcome, welcome! And this is your lovely wife?”
“She wanted to see the bricks,” Bren drawls. “Says she only wants the best for her house. Figured I’d humor her. You know women.”
I feel my cheeks warm yet again. I keep my gaze focused on the man’s chest.
He laughs genially. “No need to worry about old Téran’s bricks! I fire them at the perfect temperature; that’s the key.” He turns to me, his eyes lingering on my bruised cheek. “My bricks will last a hundred years, easy.”
I dip my head. “I’m glad to hear it, kel.”
“What did I tell you about speaking out of turn?” Bren asks, leaning toward me, his voice silky smooth.
I keep my face downturned, my teeth gritted. These may be the roles he’s chosen for us to play, but I don’t like them one bit.
“Remember that,” he says softly, and turns back to the brickmaker.
I keep my head ducked after that, followin
g Bren and Téran through the yard to the open-air hall leading to the kiln, where they discuss the making of bricks. I pretend attentiveness but really, I am watching the boys. They are all of them still damp from the morning’s rain, their hair flat against their skulls and hanging in rattails, their clothing clinging in wet folds. As they pass us in a never-ending round, I catch sight of scars on their legs, an oozing cut on one of their hands. Never once do I manage to catch their eyes.
I watch as a boy passes us to fetch a load of still hot bricks that have recently come out of the kiln. The kiln itself is housed in a single room reached by the hall we stand in. Above the kiln room’s doorway hangs a bit of wood with a shape carved into it, or perhaps burned, though I can’t tell what it’s meant to be, overlapping curves and then lines crossing over them.
Across the hall from the kiln is a small room. I glance within as another boy passes us to take his stack of bricks outside. The room is small and dark, with a bit of rubbish in the corner. No, not rubbish—blankets.
I shift, peering inside. Toward the top of the walls a series of bricks have been left out beneath the overhang of the roof, allowing for ventilation. Their absence allows just enough light for me to see that, beyond the small pile of worn blankets, the room contains only a single bucket. It doesn’t take much imagination to guess what that’s used for. This isn’t an empty storeroom; it’s where the boys sleep.
I ease back, assessing the door. It’s solid wood, with a bar to close it—on the outside. I stare at it as if I could will the bar to the other side of the door, make it a protection for these children rather than a tool of imprisonment. But there’s no arguing with it.
I turn back to the kiln room, the conversation between the men barely registering. My eyes wander over the kiln, the bricks cooling in racks. The room is sweltering hot, the air above the bricks wavering. No wonder the boys’ hands are so rough. They must have been burned daily by the bricks until their hands built up enough scar tissue to protect them.
“You’ve some good helpers here,” Bren observes, starting back out toward the gate.
“They do their job,” Téran says as I trail after them.
“Do they live around here?”
Téran grins, but it’s an unpleasant look on him. “You could say that. I give them food and board, and they work for me. No one else wants them, I can tell you that.”
“Good of you to take care of them, then,” Bren says, a slight edge to his voice. I glance at him. It’s the first indication I’ve caught that the boys’ labor bothers him. But his expression is only mildly curious as he says, “And what do they do with their time off? They have family around here to visit?”
“Nah, they’re all of them orphans. We’re our own family, see? There’s nowhere else for them to go.”
“They must be grateful to you indeed.”
“They ought to be,” Téran says. “Sometimes they need a little help with that. But you know how that is.”
Bren reaches up and places a hand at the back of my neck. “Certainly do,” he says, and I finally understand the reason for his act. This is how he has won the brickmaker’s trust enough to have such an open conversation: parading my meekness and bruises to show that he too favors violence to maintain his power and authority. He must have taken his measure of the man when he visited yesterday evening.
“We’ll be back,” Bren says now, dropping his hand from my neck to my waist. “Unless, dear wife, you are not pleased?”
“No, no,” I say quickly, as if afraid to countermand him. “It is as you wish.”
Téran smiles broadly. “Let me know how many cartloads you’ll need, and I’ll have the order ready within a week.”
Bren agrees, and a few minutes later the iron gate closes behind us.
I glance back as we walk up the street. “Why don’t they run? The boundary wall isn’t that high.”
“Look around,” Bren says, his voice hard and flat. “Do you see all these people? If they spot a boy on the run, they’ll grab him and take him back.”
“But why?”
“Because, as far as they are concerned, the boys owe that man a debt. He gives them food and board, and they work in return. No doubt all of these people have been told that Téran paid for the boys’ travel expenses to come here, and that debt must be paid off as well.”
I shake my head. “But they’re not actually in debt.”
“He bought them from underground slavers,” Bren says, and there is that edge again, razor sharp. “That is the debt he means, and they will never pay it off.”
“Are they orphans?”
“Does it matter?”
“No,” I admit. I glance toward him, then back to the road, thinking about the things he hasn’t said, just how well he understands these boys’ situation. The fact that he is doing this work, never asking for anything from the princess or me. There can only be one reason. “How did you come to be a thief, Bren?”
He casts me a look equal parts appreciative and pained. “You’ve figured it out, have you?”
That the first thing he ever stole was his own freedom? I shake my head.
He laughs, a harsh, empty sound. “Observant. I knew that from the start.”
I keep my eyes on the ground so he won’t see my pity. I’ve always hated the sight of it in other people’s eyes, and I won’t subject him to my own. Instead, I say, “Are there many others like these boys?”
“Oh, a great many. And girls too, though they often end up in brothels.”
I look up, sickened. “But that means . . .”
“That they are raped daily by anywhere from five to eight men who could, if they cared, actually free them? Yes.”
I shake my head, as if I could deny the reality of Bren’s words, the violence of them.
“You understand now why the princess needs a change in laws—laws that will prosecute men like the brickmaker and the brothel owners? And why she needs soldiers who will not turn a blind eye to those boys for the price of a few coins, who won’t instead go in for a few minutes with the girls they’re actually meant to protect? You understand?”
“Are they—are most of the children who disappear still here in Menaiya?” I ask. I cannot quite wrap my mind around the enormity of such a truth. The horror of it.
“Not likely,” Bren says. “I only wanted you to see that it isn’t all away from here. I suspect most of the slaves are trafficked to other lands. The ones here in the city? Their families are likely far out in the country and have no idea where to look for them.”
“There was a girl taken from our town,” I say slowly. “I didn’t think she’d be brought north, but—”
“No, you’re probably right. She’d have been taken to the nearest port. From Sheltershorn, that’s straight east and down the river a bit to Lirelei, isn’t it?”
I glance askance at Bren, but it shouldn’t surprise me that he looked into where I’m from. He clearly pays attention to details. “You think she’s in Lirelei?”
“She’ll be gone by now,” Bren says. “I’m sorry, Rae. I don’t think you can find her.”
I nod. But I’m not giving up on stopping the snatchers, and perhaps, somehow, we’ll still recover her.
The stable is just ahead of us, which means the end of our conversation. Once I have Moonflower, I expect Bren will depart, and with him, any chance of answers for the rest of my questions.
“The boys back there,” I say abruptly. “How do we help them?”
“We don’t,” Bren says coolly. “Talk to your princess; she’ll have to see to it.”
But she can’t. Not yet, though I suppose if I can map out where the brickmaker’s yard is—if I can find my way back, at least—I could lead a contingent of soldiers there when Alyrra’s able to order it. But she isn’t even fully married yet; she only has the soldiers Kestrin has put at her disposal. She can hardly order a raid on a brickyard on the south side, however small and irrelevant it might seem.
On the south
side. I look straight at Bren and ask, “Why is it that we came to the south side to see this?”
“Because that’s where the brickyard is?”
That’s not it at all. “You mean there aren’t such places on the west side. Does Red Hawk care as much as you do about slavers?”
“Too clever by far,” Bren murmurs softly. And then, more loudly, “He lets me do as I please when it comes to them. In return, he has my loyalty. Any other questions, or am I free to go?”
I feel myself flushing. “You were always free to go.”
“Then I take my leave of you.” He catches my hand in his and sweeps me a mocking bow. “Just Kelari.”
Halfway back to the palace on Moonflower, I realize my grandmother’s ring is no longer on my little finger. I stare down at my bare pinky finger as if the curved band with its tiny ruby might spontaneously reappear. That’s what comes of asking a thief questions he doesn’t want to answer.
I should have worn my purse instead.
Chapter
23
Upon my return to the palace, I can’t seem to sit still. The memory of the brickyard clings to me, the silent boys with their hollow eyes and thin bodies a reality I can’t leave behind. Nor do I want to. Only there’s nothing I can do about them right now—except pray, as Mama always says. I do say a prayer for them, but I want desperately to do something as well.
Without any requirements on my time before dinner, I stop into my room. Alyrra has just left for lunch, which means I cannot even tell her about what I’ve seen. I go to look for Melly, figuring a cup of tea might help. But she is, apparently, at lunch with the princess.
I stand a moment in the hallway outside her door, rubbing my arms, and then set off without direction, filled with nervous energy. At least I can walk right now, my foot aching but not actually hurting. The healer-mage’s intervention has certainly helped, and the velvet-lined shoes, made to the shape of my old slippers, are cushioning my feet properly. I’ll make myself stop before I get to the point of starting new blisters.
Eventually, I find my way out through a side door. I’ve left my cloak behind, but the sun has finally come out, and while it’s cool and the ground is wet, it isn’t too chilly. I follow a path and find myself intersecting another pathway I recognize: this is the way I came when Kirrana showed me the side entrance to the palace complex on my first, miserable day as attendant. Was it really only four or five days ago?
The Theft of Sunlight Page 16