“She’s awake.” Azmar’s baritone cuts through the muddled sounds. “Lay her here.”
My feet hit a doorjamb as Perg carries me into a dark room and lays me on something . . . not soft, but softer than the stone floor. A light follows. It illuminates Perg’s face, which hovers over me. It may be a trick of the shadows, but he looks remarkably human in this light.
I try to speak, but soreness pinches my throat. My voice comes out in a rasp. My mind returns to me, painting the schoolyard on the back of my eyelids. I gasp. It feels as though someone hammers a wooden shim into my chest, just above my sternum. I reach for it, but there’s nothing there.
Perg clasps my hand. “Don’t worry, Lark. We’ll get you a healer.”
Unach snorts. “Who will come for a human this time at night? Why was she even out of the apartment?”
“I don’t think the injuries are life threatening,” murmurs Azmar.
“Ritha.” Perg steps back. I turn my head to follow him, wincing at how stiff my neck is. “She’s in the enclave. She knows some healing.”
Unach grumbles; I feel it through the mattress. “Go, then.”
Perg ducks out of sight, and I close my eyes once more.
I wake up to a sharp pain in my hip. My eyes flutter open. Two large candles flicker near my head. The ceiling arches. Wooden supports. A bed, too large. Walls modestly adorned. A side table with an old tome and a stack of papers on it.
I’m in Azmar’s room.
Looking down, I see a human woman—Ritha—pressing something against my hip. Her dark gaze meets mine.
“It will help with the bruising,” she says, and I realize she’s applied a poultice.
Tears blur my vision, but I blink them away. Ritha wasn’t there. She wasn’t one of the humans who hated me. She’s safe. “Thank you.”
She leans back, pulling the blankets up to my ribs. My body is a spattering of aches and pains. I lift a hand to touch the swell of my cheek. A cut splits my lip as well.
“When you’re ready, drink that.” Ritha tilts her head toward the side table. A cup of something rests behind Azmar’s papers.
I swallow to wet my throat, and ask, “Do you hate me, too?”
She frowns. “Why would I hate you, Lark?”
“They hate me,” I whisper, forcing each heavy word over my tongue.
“They are fools.”
I close my eyes. Somehow, it makes the pain worse. I cling to Ritha’s words for stability. Ritha is here. Ritha will help me. It’s not over yet.
“Lark.” Ritha’s soft voice is a caress. “What is your last name?”
I blink against blurry vision. Thellele. “I don’t have one.”
She purses her lips and studies me, but she accepts the lie.
I think our conversation finished. Ritha’s thoughts have obviously led her somewhere else, and she doesn’t talk for several minutes. Then, as she’s gathering her things, she says, “Rest for a day. It’s not so bad.”
I shift on the bed, wincing at the bruises. Not so bad. Nothing broken. I remember how this goes. My father never broke anything. I was too useful to be broken.
“I’m sorry they did this to you.” Ritha pulls a tattered bag over her shoulder. “But, Lark”—she looks at me pointedly and lowers her voice—“it’s not them you should fear.”
She glances toward the door.
“Unach and Azmar have been kind to me,” I rasp, though I’m not sure she meant them.
Ritha excuses herself without another word, and I fall back into oblivion.
Chapter 5
I can’t gauge the time without a window; I can only guess at its passing by the melting of the candles. When the wicks nearly drown in their own pools, I force myself to sit up and groan against two dozen aches. But Ritha was right; they’re not so bad. They will fade in time and with movement.
I pray she is wrong about the trolls. But just in case, I want to vacate Azmar’s room as swiftly as possible.
I slide off the too-high bed onto the floor, then nearly collapse as pain zings up my left leg. I gasp and spit loose hair from my mouth. I steady myself and pull up my skirt and look at the damage. A purpling bruise the size of my open hand forms there, hot and hard. It will darken over the next day. I don’t think Ritha saw that one, for the one on my hip, which she treated, is not nearly as dark.
I search for a mirror but find none. Likely for the better. Though it hurts to raise my arms, I rebraid my hair and fix my clothes, trying to look presentable. Then, leaning against the wall, I make my way out into the main room.
Unach crouches by the fire, where water boils, running a sharpening stone over the long, curved blade of a sword.
I need to be useful. Taking a deep breath, I hobble for the broom. Unach looks up and barks a laugh. “I don’t know what’s more funny,” her low voice resonates, “the fact that your face looks like a marmot liver or that you’re trying to sweep.”
I manage the smallest smile I can without opening the cut on my lip.
She stands, reminding me of her size. Had it been trolls, even just one troll, behind the school last night, I would not be breathing this morning. She slides the great sword into a sheath hanging off her hip.
Does she use that weapon only for monsters?
“Fortunately, you’ve been approved for housing.” Unach places her hands on her hips without another word uttered about my appearance, my injuries, or my beating. When it happened in my father’s house, no one spoke of it, either, but it’s not shame that drives Unach. Being a warrior, she might be used to such bludgeoning blows. I find her lack of pity oddly reassuring. “Technically it’s servants’ housing, but you take what you can get.”
“Good.” It will be beneficial to Unach, and I won’t have to try to make myself comfortable on the floor anymore. “Where?”
“Only one level down.” She strides over and hands me an iron key. “Come. I’ll give you the day off. Waste of effort to have you bleed out internally.”
I force back another smile. Soft spot.
Then I think of the gleam in Colson’s eyes and clench my teeth to banish the image away.
Passing me, Unach picks up the heavy fur blanket I rolled up on my pallet last night. The almanac drops out. She examines it, loses interest quickly, and shoves it into the blanket roll before tossing the lot to me. I barely move fast enough to catch it.
“Azmar insists he doesn’t need it anymore, so you might as well take it.” She shrugs.
That causes me to pause. I hold the soft fur tightly against me. Azmar? So he’d laid the blanket upon me when I was shivering in the dark?
Unach doesn’t give me time to ponder. She strides for the door, and I hobble after her, using the broom as a crutch. She waits a moment, then rolls her eyes. “Regret’s breath,” she mutters, then steps toward me and swoops me into her arms.
Gasping at the pain of her forearm against my thigh, I say, “I can walk.”
“I don’t have all day.” Unach steps into the corridor and takes the lift down a single floor.
Wishing to get my mind off my bruises, I ask, “Wh-Why does everyone say that? ‘Regret’?”