“What is going on?” The sound of Roan’s gruff tone made me jump.
I shook my head, tears stinging my eyes as I looked back at the handprint on the window. Four fingers, one thumb, a large palm – it was the print of a man but what kind? Months of exhaustion finally brought me to my limit and I fell to my knees, my legs buckling beneath me.
“Whatever it was that killed the cow,” I started, “I think I saw it this morning.” His face drained of colour. There was something odd about the look in his eyes that made me lose my composure. “I’m so f-f-frightened,” I stuttered, trying to contain myself.
He looked at me, no longer angry but resolute as he pulled me into his arms. The warmth cut its way down my cheek and soaked into Roan’s shirt. “I won’t let anything get to you,” he mumbled. “Not while I’m still breathing.”
IT WAS MID-afternoon when I’d reached the Trading Post. The life that bustled around me filled me with a sense of peace and security as it kept my mind from wandering. After my small breakdown earlier that day I could have died from embarrassment and could practically hear my father’s voice screaming at me. “No one will ever take a blubbering woman seriously, Ava. They will offer you pity, not respect.”
Before leaving the farmhouse I’d made sure to scrub every window until it shone. Roan had taken on the barn, ridding the floor of the bloodied hay and burning what remained of the cow. The others in the herd hadn’t moved from the far side of the field since the doors opened. I didn’t blame them.
Though a country life was wonderful I savoured the stagnant town air. Had I been the one to choose where we lived it would have been right in the centre. The smell of burning coal filled my nostrils and I waved a hand across my face as clouds of steam leaked from the pipes of the industrial district. The Trading Post was located just on the other side of the factory buildings, where they experimented and tested their ‘new generation’ inventions for better power sources. The majority of the townsfolk didn’t dally in that sort of nonsense though. Give them food in their stomachs, clothes on their backs and fuel for their fires and they were happy.
I shifted over a large, inoperative pipe and pulled my goods further up my shoulder as the first few stalls came into sight. Wooden benches heaved with old scrap, foreign wine and spices. Some dared to sell more exotic items, such as cloth from the far Western peninsula, perfumes distilled with flowers I’d never even heard of, and small, fanged beasts in cages. The smell of man sweat and fuel mated with the earthy cooking vapours of the slop stalls a couple of rows down, and there was a constant babble of voices that shouted and sang across the district. The working man’s prayer. It was dark. It was dirty. And I loved it.
The constant breath of steam made the area so thick with fog that it clung to our clothes. In the summer the heat was stifling and made the air dense and unbearable, but on the days that bordered spring we felt luckier than most people in the city. Some men stood with their sleeves pulled up and some took their shirts off entirely. Not me, obviously. There were secrets beneath my clothes that would prove fatal for my business and my safety at a place such as the Post. On the good and bad days I could only sweat through the thin fabric and hope the steam clouds were too thick for people to notice when the shirt stuck to me in the wrong way.
I stopped in front of my usual stall and threw a heavy bag up on the table. The rest of my goods I left resting in a cart just on the other side of the warehouses. In the peak of trade, the vendors used to ridicule me for making two trips.
“Call me overly cautious,” I would say.
The men either side of me fiddled about with their remaining goods and daily takings before they noticed me setting up.
“Afternoon, Cedar. Bit late for you to be setting up, isn’t it?” said a man named Hol. He was gigantic against my small frame, with eyes like moss and hair as dark as river mud.
“There was an incident on the farm this morning.” My tone was sharper than I’d intended. “I came when I could.”
“It wasn’t that sister o’ yours, was it?” Another trader smirked. “After your da’ left I hear she’s been trying to find comfort in unsavoury ways…with unsavoury people. At least, that’s what’s said down at the Brew.”
“What right-minded man would want to stick that? He’d catch the crazy straight off her.” The men laughed and I smiled tightly.
“Must’a been bad if you’re not in the mood to talk,” Hol said. “You know, I never thought I’d see this day.” I pulled an onion from my bag and chucked it at him. He ducked and caught it on the tips of his fingers. “Cheers, lad, my missus’ll be happy.”
“If you watch my stall it’s on the house.” He chuckled. Hol was the type of man to agree without bribery but it didn’t hurt.
Ten minutes later I arrived on the back of the farm’s old plough horse. The other men laughed around me as I stopped in front of the stall. Hol looked to the beast and then to me, an eyebrow raised.
“What?” I shrugged. “This is the only horse we have.”
“Why’d you even need to bring a horse? Usually you’ve got nothing more than a handful of vegetables to sell this early in the year.”
“Well, not today,” I mumbled. Hol eyed the covered cart with interest and I walked the horse around the back of the stall. A few regulars in the market turned their attention to me as I unloaded cauliflowers and parsnips. People would buy them but they weren’t exactly worth stopping for. Then I pulled out a package that caught everyone’s attention. The crinkled paper binding was wet with blood and I scanned the arcade for unfamiliar faces before unwrapping it.
Then the market exploded into mutters and gasps.
“Meat?” Hol could hardly believe it.
“Beef, to be more precise,” I corrected him. “Money’s a bit tight so we culled one of our cows a fortnight back.”
It wasn’t a very good lie but nobody seemed to care. In reality I just needed time to increase the farm’s security. Not only had the previous night resulted in the death of one of my livestock but a trespasser – two trespassers, maybe – had sauntered onto my land without a whisper. Daeus-be-damned if I’d let it happen again.
“How much?” a thin woman asked, eyeing a medium cut.
“Four-and-two,” I said, ready to fight for my price but the woman threw the coins on the counter and the others in the crowd advanced onto my stall. Quickly the market turned into an auction as cuts were sold off, piece by piece. Despite some of the prices rising higher than I’d intended, it had still been cheaper than the butcher’s meat.