OLIN SAW WALTER’S FOOT A MOMENT BEFORE it connected with his stomach.1
OLIN SAW WALTER’S FOOT A MOMENT BEFORE it connected with his stomach.
Air gushed from his lungs as the kick landed and he folded in upon himself in the hard-packed dirt of the alley, his arms cradling his gut. Pain exploded from his abdomen, radiating outward into his legs, smothering the aches and pains from all the other blows Walter and his gang had landed earlier. Colin rocked back and forth, tried not to cry out, the pain in his stomach spreading to his thighs, sending tentative spikes into his lower back—
And then, with a sickening sensation—a loose, queasy, tingling sensation—his bladder gave.
Colin’s eyes flew wide in horror and he gasped, spittle flecked with blood from where he’d bitten his inner cheek flying from his lips. He felt warmth spread through his underlinen and breeches, and he squeezed his eyes closed tight. Hot tears burned his cheeks; tears he’d managed not to shed as the gang cornered him and began beating him, tears he’d vowed he wouldn’t shed again after the last time they’d found him. He fought them as he pulled his knees in even tighter, as he tried to hide the blotch of wetness that now covered the front of his breeches. But he couldn’t hide the sharp, pungent stench.
“Diermani’s balls,” Walter swore, stepping back from Colin with a lurch, one hand covering his mouth as he faked gagging. “The little squatter pissed his pants!”
Walter’s three cohorts roared with laughter. One of them stepped forward, planted his feet to either side of Colin’s head, and spat onto Colin’s face. Colin flinched as it struck his cheek, tightened the ball he’d made himself into, the tears of shame and pain and ineffectual anger he’d held back now slipping down his nose into the dirt. His breath came in short, hitching gasps. His side cramped with a sudden sharp spasm, and he cried out.
“Stupid shit,” the older boy said from above him. It sounded like Brunt, the largest of the gang; Walter’s heavy. “Don’t you know how to hold your water? You take your breeches down before you piss!”
“Damn refugee,” Gregor said from farther away. “Go back to Andover, where you came from. We were here first!”
“Yeah, go back west, back across the Arduon Ocean, back to the Bontari Family and the Court and their goddamned war.”
Colin began sobbing. He couldn’t stop it, no matter how hard he clenched his teeth. Keeping his eyes tight, he listened as the gang shuffled around, Brunt withdrawing, his feet scuffing the dirt of the alley, kicking it up into Colin’s face. Snot clogged Colin’s nose, and he began breathing through his mouth in harsh exhalations. He listened to the gang chuckling, listened to see if they were going to kick him more, or punch him, or pinch him as they’d done before. They seemed to have withdrawn.
But they hadn’t left.
Someone’s foot stamped down hard into the dirt close to Colin’s head, and he jerked and cried out. Another burst of laughter, and then a hand clamped onto Colin’s upper arm, fingers bruising the skin through his shirt, and wrenched him upright. Colin’s eyes flew open as new pain flared in his shoulder, and he found himinches from Walter’s thin face. The thug’s gray-green eyes blazed with hatred beneath his dirty, blond hair. His mouth was twisted into a grimace, as if he could barely stand touching Colin.
“Listen, pissant,” he hissed. “Portstown belongs to us, to the Carrente Family. We were here first. Our grandfathers crossed the Arduon and settled the damn town, and we don’t want any of you refugees here screwing the place up, especially Bontari refugees.” He twisted the Bontari Family name with derision, with cold hatred. “So crawl back to your pissant parents in that hovel you refugees have built over in Lean-to and tell them to get the hell out of our town.”
He shook Colin to emphasize his words, Colin limp in his grip. He thought Walter was going to kick him again, or knee him in the groin, as he’d done once before—Colin could see the intent in the sudden tightening of the corners of Walter’s eyes—but Walter merely snorted in disgust and thrust him to the ground, one of the other thugs giggling. Colin scrambled up onto his elbows, but the gang had retreated to the far end of the alley and now sauntered out into the greater sunlight of the main street. None of them looked back. Rick, the smallest of the bunch but still bigger than Colin, punched Brunt in the arm. Brunt grabbed him around the neck and hauled him down into a chokehold as they rounded the corner, ignoring Rick’s shouted, “Hey!”
Once they were gone, Colin sank back and lay flat, wincing at another spasm in his side. He wiped the snot and spit from his face, felt the grit that had stuck to his skin, and let his arm flop back down to his side. He stared up at the blue sky overhead between the edges of the two warehouses to either side and tried to think of nothing.
Instead, he thought of home. Not the makeshift shed in the section of town that locals called Lean-to—no more than a single closed-off room with a dirt floor, a blanket for a door, a crudestone cook pit, and some pallets. He thought of Trent, in Andover, the city across the ocean that he’d called home his entire life. He thought about the house they’d lived in—a real house, with stone floors, a wooden door, and a patch of land enclosed by a low stone wall. When he’d been younger, he’d helped his mother plant gardens while his father was away working for the Family and the carpenter’s guild. Tomatoes and peppers and all of the herbs: parsley and oregano and basil. Until age five, when he’d been sent to the school to learn of writing and mathematics and the Codex of Holy Diermani. At nine, he’d begun his apprenticeship in his father’s carpenter’s guild, even though many of the boys his age had decided to enter the Armor y, to serve in the Family’s army.
But then his father had come home one day and told them he’d found them room on one of the refugee ships heading to the east, to the New World. Because of the rumblings of a war within the Court, a Feud among the Families.
Colin frowned as he lay in the dirt of the alley, his eyes narrowed in anger. He remembered the day of the departure clearly. He hadn’t wanted to leave, hadn’t wanted to give up his apprenticeship, his friends, his life.
So he’d fled to the guildhall, had been stubbornly sanding down the edges of the Markosan cabinet for Dom Pellum when his father flung open the door to the workroom. Everyone had halted their work when the door cracked against the inner wall—everyone but Colin. The harsh scraping of sand trapped between two planes of wood had been the only sound in the room until the moment his father’s hand gripped his shoulder and spun him around.
“Colin Patris Harten, what in bloody Diermani’s name do you think you are doing?”
Colin glared up into his father’s rage. “I’m finishing Dom Pellum’s cabinet.”
“No,” his father said. “You’re coming with me, with your mother.”
His father’s hand clamped so tightly around Colin’s arm that Colin could feel his own fingers tingling. And then his father began to drag him out of the guild.
“No! No, you can’t make me!” Colin flung himself backward with all his weight, clawed at his father’s hand, dug in his feet, but his father’s lean frame was too strong, his grip too tight.
They’d made it to the door, Colin kicking and screaming the entire way, tears beginning to form, when the guildmaster stepped in front of them.
“What are you doing, Tom?”
Colin felt a surge of hope, tasting like sweet apple in the back of his throat.
“I’m taking my son,” his father said, voice tight with warning, “and Ana, and we’re going to board the Trader’s Luck.”
“Headed for Portstown? With the Chance and the Merry Weather?”
“Aye.”
“That’s a Carrente town. Carrente and Bontari have never been allies in the Court. With the coming Feud, are you certain—?”
“I’m a member of the guild. It’s a new world, they’ll need craftsmen—journeymen—in order to expand. I have my papers. The guildhall will accept me, Bontari or not.”
The guildmaster nodded at the defensiveness in Colin’s father’s voice, although Colin could see the doubt in his gaze as he turned to look down on Colin. “And I take it that Colin doesn’t want to go.”
It wasn’t a question, but Colin’s father answered anyway. “No. But he’s not yet twelve. He’s not of age to make the decision for himself.”
Colin stared up into the guildmaster’s eyes, pleaded with himwith every fiber of his body. The guildmaster’s eyebrows drew together in consideration, and he drew in a deep breath, held it—
Then exhaled heavily, shaking his head.
He stepped aside. “He’s your son.”
The taste of apple turned suddenly sour.
His father stepped forward before the betrayal sank in completely, pulling Colin out into blinding sunlight onto the steps of the guildhall, but then Colin began to struggle again. That’s when his father jerked him in front of himself and cuffed him hard on the back of the head. “Stop it, Colin, stop it!”
Colin gasped and froze. Not because his father had struck him—he’d been cuffed on the head before, and not just by his father or mother—but because of the fear he heard in his father’s voice. Fear he’d never heard there before; fear he could now see in his father’s eyes as he knelt down beside him.
“I know you don’t understand this, Colin, but we have to leave. Now. The Families are preparing for a Feud, one that I don’t think will be settled in a day or a month or even a year. It’s going to rip the Court apart, and I don’t want you or your mother to be caught up in it. And it’s going to involve all the Families. There won’t be anywhere in Andover it won’t reach. Which means we can’t stay in Andover. The only place left to flee is across the Arduon, to the New World.”
Then the city’s bells began to toll midday, and his father’s haggard glance shot skyward, toward the sun and the drifting clouds, and he swore under his breath.
Standing, he said, “The ship’s going to leave soon. We have to hurry.”
And they had, running down through the Circle, through the tiered outer Precinct and market, to the shipyard and docks and the vibrant blue waters below. Colin had stumbled along at his father’s side at first, but the pace was too slow and after a few blocks his father hoisted him up onto his back. From this vantage, he could see the labyrinthine streets packed with crowds of hundreds as they passed, sun glinting off the rounded, orange-red clay tiles of roofs, the blinding white buildings, the porticos, walled gardens, and secluded courtyards, all crammed into the steep landscape in haphazard fashion. At the top of the rocky bluff, above Trent, the stone columns of Dom Pellum’s estate rose into the blue sky, verandas, colonnades, and stone statues spread out amid the acres of grapes in the vineyards behind. For the first time, Colin noticed the groups of men from the Armory, noticed their brooding eyes as they watched the streets, their armor and pointed helmets glinting in the sun. They were everywhere, especially at the docks, three entire ships flying the Bontari pennant surrounded by them as crates of supplies were unloaded and carted up the terraces to the Dom’s estates.
Colin saw his mother on the dock that held the Trader’s Luck a moment before his father leaned back and shrugged him down from his shoulders.
“Thank Diermani,” his mother gasped, crossing herself— forehead, chest, right shoulder, heart—and the fear in her eyes drove the last of Colin’s resistance away. But not the resentment. “We have to hurry. The captain has already threatened to leave without us.” She snatched Colin’s hand and then rushed toward the end of the dock, a satchel flung over one shoulder.
“He doesn’t dare,” his father growled as he stooped down and hauled two sacks onto his back and lifted a chest containing his tools into his arms, grunting with the weight. “I’m acting as ship’s carpenter on the trip.”
They hustled to the lowered plank. The captain bellowed, “There you are! Get them down below and your gear stowed. We’re leaving. Now!”
His mother had descended the ladder into the hold before him. His father had shoved him from behind, to keep him moving.
And then, with two hundred and twenty other men, women, and children, on three different ships, they’d fled Trent.
A part of him had hated his father that day. A part of him hated his father still.
His father.
He lurched upright into a seated position in the alley in Portstown, winced at the pain in his stomach and sides, at the bruises he could already feel forming on his arms, chest, and back. But the loose, queasy sensation in his gut had faded, leaving behind a shaking weakness in his legs.
He stared down at his soiled breeches, his dirt-smeared, torn shirt, and felt sick.
His father would kill him.
“You may as well come in, Colin. I can see your shadow.”
Colin gave a guilty start. He’d been hovering outside of the ramshackle hut they’d claimed in Lean-to, listening to his mother hum softly to herself as she worked. But now he sighed and shoved aside the ragged blanket they were using as a door and entered.
He halted just inside the entrance, not quite able to look at his mother, and waited for the lecture to begin, as it had the last two times.
Instead, his mother simply said, “Oh, Colin. Not again.” The defeat in her voice forced him to look up.
She sat before the circle of stones that made up their fire pit. Wood had been set, ready to be lit, and the tripod braces his father had constructed to hold the pot over the flames were out and waiting. His mother held the pot in her lap, her arms resting on its edges as she sliced a potato to add to the water. The skin around her hazel eyes appeared bruised with exhaustion, her face gaunt. She’d pulled her long black hair back and pinned it to keep it out of her face while she worked.
They stared at each other. Colin felt tears begin to burn his eyes again, but he clamped his jaw tight and forced the sensation back, his gangly body going rigid.
His mother smiled tightly, and then she set the black pot to one side and stood.
“Well, come here,” she said, moving toward the table against one wall, where she picked up a cloth and dipped it into water. “We’ll get you cleaned up as much as possible before your father gets back. He’s down at the docks, looking for work.”
Colin could hear the snort in her words. His father had been down to the docks looking for work for the past eight weeks but had found nothing so far. Nothing of significance.
His mother turned, wringing out the cloth, then paused when she noticed the stain on the front of his breeches. Her sudden frown almost brought the tears back, but then she knelt and looked up into his eyes, pressing the damp cloth to his face, wiping away the blood and dirt, and the tracks his earlier tears had made.
“Was it Walter and his cronies?”
“Yes. They caught me on Water Street. They dragged me into an alley.”
“And no one saw you?”
Colin didn’t answer.
His mother sat back. “People saw you, but no one came to help?”
He nodded.
His mother stood abruptly, threw the cloth back onto the table as she stormed over to the pallets and one of the small chests they’d carried with them all the way from Trent. “Were they townsmen who saw you?” she snapped as she dug through the chest, lifting out clothes and setting them to one side. “Were they from the Carrente Family? Sartori’s people?”
“Yes.”
She muttered something under her breath, then pushed back from the chest and stalked across the room. “Here. Get out of those breeches and linen and into these. Your father should be here any minute.”
Colin moved to the corner of the room and stripped off his soiled breeches and underlinen, his back to his mother. He shoved his feet into the new clothes hurriedly, head ducked and body hunched. He didn’t like to be naked in front of his mother any longer than he had to any more. Even the thought made his cheeks burn, his chest and stomach tingle.
He had just cinched the ties of the breeches together when his father stepped into the hovel.
He swore under his breath the minute he saw Colin, his eyes going black. “Walter?”
Before Colin could nod, his mother spat, “Of course it was Walter! Who else would it have been?”
“Any of the goddamned townspeople who were here before us.”
“Don’t you dare curse in front of Colin.” His mother’s voice had gone soft and flat; Colin involuntarily took a step backward, edging to the right. He hated it when his parents argued, but his father still stood in the doorway, blocking any exit. “And the townspeople here treated us fine when we arrived. They even gave you a job on the docks after the guild turned you away. A job you’d still have if you hadn’t been so arrogant!”
“It was the arrival of the Breeze—”
“No!” His mother sliced the air with one hand. “No! You will not blame the loss of your job on the arrival of more refugees from Andover. Yes, more and more of them arrive, practically each day. Yes, they’re fleeing Andover and the Feud. And yes, there are others being shipped here as well—prisoners given a second chance, Armory discharged for suspect reasons, and others. But that is not why you lost your job. You lost your job because you couldn’t stand the fact that you were a guildsman, a carpenter, and you were doing ‘menial’ labor on the docks because the guild here is Carrente and refused to accept a Bontari Family member into its ranks. You had to let everyone know that the work was beneath you. You had to put on airs. And you wonder why the regular dockworkers turned on you, why they made your life even more miserable. You let them goad you into a fight! Forget the fact that it was the only work available at the moment. Ignore the fact that you have a wife and son to support, that we barely have any funds left from Andover. Forget that—”
But here his mother halted. Colin could see the redness around her eyes, could see the watery tears that she tried to hide by raising a hand to her quivering mouth and turning away. His father had straightened, hands fisted at his sides, but now, staring at her shaking shoulders, he faltered.
“Ana—”
“Don’t.”
His father shifted up to his mother’s back. Reaching for her, he began again. “Ana, I don’t know—”
But his mother flinched away before he could touch her, and he stiffened. His hands hovered for a moment, then closed into fists and pulled back in frustrated, impotent anger.
He turned, stared at Colin, his expression tortured, jaw clenched.
Then, without a word, he ducked through the door, the blanket falling back into place with a rustle. His mother sobbed, hunching forward over the lone table in the room.
He hated it when they fought. He hated it when his mother cried.
Colin slid toward the door and shoved his way out into the late afternoon sunlight, hesitated, trapped between frustrated anger at his father and his mother’s sobbing. He glared at the woman sitting outside her own door across from them, at her sympathetic frown, then spun and stormed off into the warren of narrow pathways between the shanties and huts, dodging men and women and children, all of them dressed in what had once been decent clothing but that now looked used and worn, most of them thin, those that had just arrived on ships gaunt or emaciated from the long journey or illness. He ignored them all, ignored the lost look in their eyes, the desperation, a look that had crept into his father’s eyes in the last few weeks, a look that had died in his mother’s eyes months ago.
Colin dodged a pack of smaller kids, most of them half naked, and wound his way to the center of Lean-to, a small rounded area of land with a large plinth of natural stone thrust up through the packed dirt. The sounds of the refugees from Andover surrounded him—shouts, the barking of a dog, the screams of children, the wailing of babies—all filtered through the sunlight and the stench of too many unwashed bodies pressed too closely together. He considered heading back into Portstown, back to the streets, but the fear of running into Walter and his gang again forced him to turn in the other direction, out toward the plains to the north and east of town.
A breeze gusted in from the ocean as soon as he moved outside the rough but growing boundary of Lean-to, pushing Colin’s dark brown hair down into his eyes, bringing with it the taste of seaweed and salt. The ground began a slow incline, so unlike the sharp cliffs and terraced land around Trent, and within moments Colin found himself traipsing through grass, the stalks reaching up beyond his knees, the unripe grain pattering against his thighs. He reached down to run his hands through the grass, but the edges were too sharp, the seed heads too prickly.
He trudged up the crest of land to the north of Portstown and took a moment to stare down at the port, at the narrow docks that struck out into the water, the scattering of wooden buildings that made up the town’s center, and the large stone building that belonged to the Proprietor, a low wall surrounding it. A second stone building stood off to one side, almost as large as the Proprietor’s house: the church, its small spire topped off with the tilted cross of Holy Diermani. Only a few streets cut between the buildings, one running along the docks, one down to the warehouses to the south—Water Street, where Walter and his gang had caught Colin that afternoon—and three jutting out into the land and the twenty or so buildings that had been erected further inland. Homes and cottages and barns given by the Proprietor to the more prominent people in town continued out beyond where the streets trailed into dust and grass, most of them with small patches of plowed land, early spring crops already growing.
Lean-to had formed over the last few months to the north of the main portion of Portstown. At first nothing more than a few hovels on the bluff overlooking the port, with the influx of hundreds from Andover it had grown into a mass of huts and shacks and tents, all crammed against one another. From this height, Colin could see the section that housed most of the craftsmen, people who’d belonged to a guild in Andover but who weren’t part of the Carrente Family or any of its allies. These huts and tents appeared more orderly, with clothes hung out on lines, flapping in the wind, and smoke rising from cook fires. The majority of the tents farther north were ragged, dirtier, barely standing, and haphazardly placed. Most of the prisoners given clemency if they agreed to help settle the New World had ended up there, along with anyone else who had caused problems after arriving in Portstown. And people from all over Andover had arrived, representing all of the twelve Families of the Court, from all walks of life.
Except that here in Portstown, here in the New World, there was no Court, there were no Families. At least, that was what they’d all been led to believe in Andover: that the New World was full of possibility, of riches, of dreams.
Colin snorted. That hadn’t been true. There was a Proprietor in every settlement on the new coast. The Proprietor held the power in each of the towns: power sanctioned by one of the Families. The Proprietor of Portstown owned the land for as far as anyone could see, in all directions. He and the townspeople—the men and women who’d founded the town and all of their descendants fifty years back—were beholden to the Proprietor’s Family, to the Court, an extension of Andover.
And over the past few months, they’d made it clear that those fleeing the Feud in Andover who were not part of the Carrente Family weren’t wanted.
Colin turned his back on the town in disgust and faced east, out across the plains, at the smooth folds in the land covered in grass, dotted here and there with copses of trees or broken chunks of stone like the one in the middle of Lean-to. He struck off farther north, toward where one of those stones cut through the earth in a flat shelf, and sat down, legs crossed beneath him.
He’d found this place within the first week of arriving in Portstown, when the excitement over the new town and the new land had still been fresh, when he’d been trying to forget the death and disease that had plagued the three ships during the trip across the Arduon. He’d come to this rock and simply stared out over the grass that seemed to stretch forever, rustling in the wind, rippling in various shades of green and gold and yellow, dotted with the shadows of scattered clouds.
Now, he leaned back on his arms, stared up into the blue sky, watched the dark circling of a hawk high above, and slowly the tension in his shoulders ebbed. The sun beat down with soothing warmth, and heat radiated up from the rough granite beneath his palms. He closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, smelled the grass, the earth, the stone, listened to the shriek of the hawk above, faint with distance, to the wind as it rustled in the stalks surrounding him. The shame over pissing his breeches drained away, along with the anger at his father and his hatred of Walter and Portstown and the Carrente. All of it faded, even the throbbing of the bruises in his arms and on his chest.
Relaxed, he opened his eyes and gazed into the distance, to where the rumpled land met the sky.
The openness of that world called to him. If he breathed slowly enough, if he grew still enough, he could almost hear it.
His father returned to the hut after dark.
Colin sat before the fire. His mother sat on one of the sleeping pallets, Colin’s torn shirt in her lap, her needle and thread flashing in the light as she mended it. A pile of assorted clothes sat next to her: shirts and breeches and linens from a few of the other members of Lean-to that also needed repair.
His parents looked at each other a moment after his father ducked through the entrance, his mother pausing in her work. Then Tom’s gaze fell on Colin.
He moved toward the fire, reached forward to ruffle Colin’s hair, but Colin ducked his head and shifted out of the way.
“Colin, come here.”
When Colin didn’t move, his father squatted down next to him by the fire with a grunt and held out his hand. “I have something for you.”
He still hadn’t forgiven his father, but he couldn’t help himself. He looked, then frowned.
Tom held what appeared to be a wadded up ball of string.
“What is it?”
His father grinned. “Take it.”
As Colin pulled it from his father’s hand, Tom settled down beside him. Unraveling the loose ends of the straps, Colin realized it wasn’t string, but leather. In its center, a wide rectangular piece was wrapped around a knotted ball. The straps were tied to the rectangular piece through slits. One of the straps had ties on the end; the other ended in the knotted ball.
“It’s a sling,” his father explained after making himself comfortable. “I made it this afternoon.”
“You made him a sling?” his mother asked sharply. “What for?”
“So he can protect himself,” his father growled. Then he drew in a shuddering breath and said more calmly, “So he can defend himself from Walter and his gang.”
His mother’s silence spoke volumes.
“Ana, he needs something he can use to protect himself from those bastards. He needs to be able to fight back.”
“He shouldn’t need to fight back at all.”
“No, he shouldn’t. But I don’t think anyone in Portstown, least of all the Proprietor, is going to do anything about it. Walter’s the Proprietor’s son for God’s sakes! Colin’s almost twelve. I think he can handle a sling. I had one when I was his age. Unless you’d rather I give him a knife to defend himself with?”
His mother’s eyes narrowed. “No. I don’t want Colin running around with a knife.”
“Then the sling will have to do.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “I can’t do anything about finding work, not at the moment. At least let me try to fix this.”
Colin thought his mother would argue more, but she only closed her eyes and shook her head before returning to her mending.
Tom breathed a sigh of relief, barely audible, and the tension in his shoulders eased. He turned to Colin and smiled. The first real smile Colin had seen on his face in months.
“Tomorrow morning, I’ll take you out to the plains, and we’ll see if I can remember how to use it,” he said.
Colin barely slept that night and not because his parents argued in hushed voices from their sleeping pallet not ten paces away, his mother fretting, his father trying to calm her. He curled up in his own pallet, back toward them, the sling clutched in one hand, a tight grin on his face.
In the morning, he was dressed and ready before either of his parents. The bacon fried too slowly, the fire burned too cold, and time dragged, until finally his mother snapped, “Colin, settle down and stop pacing! Your father will take you out as soon as he’s finished breakfast. Now, go fill this pot with water before I strangle you!”
Colin froze, then snatched the pot from his mother’s hands and tore out of the hut, his mother mumbling, “Holy Diermani preserve us from overexcited children.”
“He’s almost of age, Ana. He’s not a child anymore.”
Colin didn’t hear his mother’s response, already racing through the paths between tents and shanties toward one of the numerous streams that drained down toward the port. He dodged an old woman as she dumped dirty water into his path, leaped over a barking dog as the woman shouted something unintelligible after him, rounded the last corner before the stream—
And plowed into a girl headed in the other direction.
They tumbled to the ground in a mess of arms and legs, buckets and water. Bruises that Colin had forgotten since last night awoke as he struck the ground, and the girl’s elbow caught him in the cheek as they landed, the girl crying out. Frigid water sluiced down Colin’s shirt from one of the girl’s buckets, and for a moment Colin couldn’t breathe.
Then he gasped, sucked in a harsh breath and rolled to the side, onto his stomach.
“What in Diermani’s eight bloody hells were you doing?” the girl shrieked. “And look what you’ve done. I just cleaned these buckets!”
Colin heard feet stamping, heard the rattle of a bucket’s handle, and then a sudden pause.
“Oh, God.” Someone dropped to the dirt beside him and rolled him over. “Are you hurt? You aren’t hurt, are you?”
Colin sucked in another breath and winced at the feeling of his shirt plastered to his chest with mud.
“My mother’s going to kill me,” he muttered.
The girl—slightly taller than him, a year or two older, with short wild brown hair and freckles across her nose—leaned back onto her heels and glared down at him with hard green eyes. “She should, and you’d deserve it, tearing around here like that.” Her frown deepened. “You’re Colin, the carpenter’s son, aren’t you?”
He coughed and sat upright. “Yes.” He took a closer look at the girl. “Who are you?”
She snorted. “Karen. I was on the Merry Weather.” Her voice broke, filled with dark inflections. She couldn’t hold his gaze, her eyes dropping, darting down and away. More than half the passengers on the Merry Weather had died of some kind of wasting sickness on the voyage across the Arduon.
A moment later, she cleared her throat. “Why is your mother going to kill you?”
Colin groaned. “Because this was my last clean shirt.” Karen snorted. “That’s easy to fix. Take it off.”
Colin hesitated, and Karen rolled her eyes.
“Fine, don’t take it off. Let your mother see you like that.” She scrambled back to her feet, bucket in one hand, and headed toward the stream.
“Wait!” Colin said, grabbing his pot and following her. She’d already retrieved her other bucket and knelt by the stream, one bucket in the water, the second beside her, by the time he caught up.
She looked up at him, then extended one hand. “Well?”
He unbuttoned his shirt, fumbling a little, then handed the shirt over.
Karen gasped at the bruises across his chest and side, a few yellowed and fading, but most blue-black and purple. “How did you get those?”
Colin backed up a quick step when she reached out to touch him, already self-conscious without his shirt on. “Doesn’t matter.”
She gave him a skeptical look but didn’t say anything, turning back to the stream. She plunged his shirt into the water. “This shouldn’t be too hard to clean, since the mud is fresh.” She began scrubbing the shirt vigorously.
Colin watched her from behind. A breeze gusted from the ocean and all of the little hairs on his arms prickled and stood on end. He shivered.
Karen held up the shirt, frowned at it, then scrubbed it again before declaring it acceptable.
“It’s not perfect,” she said, holding it out to him, “but it should do.” She sluiced out her own buckets, then filled them with water. When she turned back, she added, “You should really learn to clean your own shirts though.”
Then she smiled and, buckets in hand, moved off.
Colin stood stock-still, stunned, his shirt held out before him, until the gusting breeze brought him back.
He hastily put the shirt back on, grimacing as the damp fabric stuck to his skin, then filled his pot and headed back home.
His mother gave him a raised eyebrow when she saw his shirt, but she said nothing. His father didn’t even notice.
“Ready to learn the sling?” he asked, as soon as Colin handed the pot of water over to his mother.
“Yes.”
“Then grab it and let’s head down to the shore.”
“The shore?” his mother asked. “I thought you were going to the plains?”
“I changed my mind. We’ll practice on the plains eventually, but for now there’ll be more stones on the beach.”
Colin retrieved his sling from his mother.
“Be careful,” she called after them, hands on hips. “Especially you, Tom.”
His father grunted as they ducked through the door, and then they were moving down through Lean-to, in the direction of Portstown, but toward the northern end. Most of the people they met nodded to them or raised a hand in greeting. A few of the men called out to his father.
When they reached the edge of Lean-to, a group of three men joined them, most craftsmen Colin recognized from the voyage east on Trader’s Luck.
“Mornin’, Tom. Heading down to the docks?” Paul asked, falling into step beside Colin. Shorter than his father and broader of shoulder, he’d been a smith in Andover with hopes of making master in fewer than the typical twelve years as journeyman here in the New World.
“Not today. I haven’t found work on the docks in over a week.”
“None of us have,” Paul said grimly, and the other two who’d joined them murmured agreement. “They’re using those of us in Lean-to less and less, preferring their own men or the crews on the ships, even when it’s obvious they could use the help. I don’t like it.”
Tom frowned. “Neither do I, but what can we do about it?” Paul traded a look with the others. “We don’t know. But if you haven’t noticed, it’s becoming a little desperate here in Lean-to. Most of us have used up whatever money we brought with us from Andover, and the food is running short. We can’t afford anything in the town; they’ve jacked up their prices, at least for those of us from certain Families. And they don’t want to barter with us for goods or services.”
“And we can’t hunt the game in the forest any more,” one of the others mumbled.
His father halted in his tracks. “What?”
Paul nodded. “The Proprietor just issued a new decree. He’s claimed the forests to the north and south for himself and the Carrente Family. Anyone caught poaching is to be put in the penance locks in the center of town for two days. Anyone caught twice will be hanged. Or sent back to Andover in chains.”
“Which means death for certain.” Colin thought the man’s name was Sam. “ They’ll put you in the Armor y, send you to the front ranks once the Feud starts in earnest. Most of those here in Lean-to are already criminals, have already been given the choice of the Armor y or the New World. If they’re sent back from here . . .”
A troubled look crossed his father’s face. After a pause, he continued toward Portstown. “Where does he expect us to find fresh meat then?” he asked.
“I don’t think the Proprietor expects us to find meat at all,” Paul grumbled.
“So what should we do?” Sam asked.
Tom didn’t answer for a moment. Then: “Nothing, for now. Except what we’ve been doing.”
“And what about meat? What about food?” the third man snarled. “I didn’t come here to starve at the Carrente’s hands.”
Tom caught his eye and held it. “I’ll think of something, Shay.”
Paul nodded and broke away, Sam and Shay following, headed toward the docks. Colin’s father watched, then turned toward the shore in the other direction, one hand on Colin’s shoulder. He squeezed once and smiled. “Nothing to worry about, Colin. Let’s find some rocks for that sling.”
But Colin heard the lie in his voice, saw it in the troubled look in his eyes.
They moved down from the grass into the sand along the beach, picking up stones as they went. Gulls and other shorebirds banked into the breeze overhead, and waves tumbled and crashed into the strand, foaming white as they drove up onto the beach. Seaweed had collected in clumps, left behind by the tide to dry out in the sun, and sand fleas hopped away in clouds as they passed. Small crabs—too small to be worth catching and eating—crawled among the occasional piece of driftwood. Closer to the water, where the tide was retreating, clams spit jets of water up from where they’d burrowed beneath the sand. The sharp scent of salt filled the air; Colin could taste it when he licked his lips.
Once they’d moved far enough north of the town, they halted.
“Now,” his father said, taking the sling from Colin’s grip and unwrapping the straps, “the sling is a weapon, not a toy. It can be extremely dangerous, and your mother made me promise that I’d teach you how to use it properly.
“See these ties here? They’re used to anchor this end of the sling to your wrist.” As he spoke, his father tied the sling to his own wrist. “The strap on this side is meant to dangle between your thumb and first finger, like this. The other strap, the one with the knot tied in the end, is held in the same hand. This forms a small pouch with the rectangular piece of leather, like a little hammock. To load it, you let the sling dangle down and place the stone in the pocket.” His father placed a rounded stone in the pouch. “When you want to release the stone, or whatever it is that you’re trying to throw, you let go of the knot.” His father let the knot go and the stone dropped down into the sand with a soft thump. His father reached down to retrieve it. “Obviously, you need to get some momentum behind the stone before you release it. You do that by twirling the sling, either to the side if you want to sling it underhand, or if you want more power behind it, overhead.”
His father placed the stone back in the sling, then looked at Colin. “So, let’s see if I remember how to sling at all. You’d better step back.”
Colin took a few quick steps backward, and his father began twirling the sling for an underhanded throw down the beach. The sling picked up speed, his father using his entire arm—
And then suddenly the strap with the knot snapped outward. The stone arched up, a black speck against the light blue of the sky, then fell and kicked up a plume of sand a significant distance away. Tom let out a yelp of laughter, then turned toward Colin. “Not where I was aiming, but . . .” He trailed off into a grin. “Now it’s your turn.”
Colin leaped forward.
His father tied the sling to his right arm, crossing the cords back and forth in a lattice pattern, then placed the knot in his hand, closing Colin’s fist with one hand and squeezing once before letting him go and stepping back. Held at his side, the sling nearly touched the sand; he was a full foot shorter than his father.
“Just spin it at first,” his father said. “Get a feel for it.”
Colin placed one of the water-smoothed stones from the beach into the pouch, then began twirling the sling, a thrill coursing up his arm and down into his chest, into his gut. He found himself smiling uncontrollably. The weight of the stone, the tension he could feel in the cords around his arm, thrummed in his body, and he began to spin the rock faster.
“Not so fast, Colin,” his father said, but Colin didn’t need the warning. He could feel the loss of control in his arm, could feel the swing becoming erratic.
He backed off, concentrating, until he regained control. He was using the underhand swing, as his father had done, and he could already feel the strain in his arm and shoulder, muscles he wasn’t used to using beginning to burn.
“When you’re ready, let the knot go.”
Colin waited, focusing on the rock. Then he let the knot loose. He felt the sling jerk in his arm as the release cord snapped outward. A surge of adrenalin shuddered through his body, cold and warm at the same time—
And then the stone thudded into the sand not two feet from him, spitting up a spume that pattered back down with a hiss.
His father burst out laughing, and he flushed to the roots of his hair, his scalp prickling with the sensation.
He almost turned to run, but his father gasped, “Colin! Colin, wait!” Between chuckles, wiping the tears from his eyes, he clapped a hand to Colin’s shoulder and said, “Everyone does that the first time. You need to find where the release point is, that’s all. And how to change it so you can hit targets at different distances. It takes practice. Lots and lots of practice.” He passed over another stone. “Let’s try it again. If you work at it, you can learn to hit just about anything—rabbits, birds, deer. And if you build up your strength, you can even kill with it. But it won’t happen overnight.
“Do you think you can keep at it? Truly learn how to use it?” He looked into his father’s eyes, saw the smile there, the pride, and behind it the worry. Worry for his mother, for him. Worry about Portstown and the Proprietor, about their survival here in the New World, on this new coast.
“Yes,” Colin said, his hand tightening on the sling’s knot. “Yes, I can learn it.”
And he meant it. He meant to practice until his arm ached, until he could hit anything within a hundred yards, accurately and repeatedly, standing still or moving.
And then he intended to use the sling on the Proprietor’s son. He intended to hunt Walter down and make him pay.