So, he picked her back up and he carried her, walking over the hills and around the cliffs and through the valleys, following the road that led them back to the keep. Eventually, they reached it.
He carried her directly through the front door of Foxglove Peak. He went right into the main sitting room and deposited her on the couch and collapsed on the floor next to her, exhausted.
The steward was in there. He got up from the writing desk where he’d been seated, writing a letter or setting out some contract or the shadow only knew what. His uncle peered down at him.
“I tried to run off on my own,” he said. “I was going to hop a train. She came after me. She got hurt. I had to carry her all the way back.”
“Run away?” said the steward, stepping closer. “Do you not appreciate the charity I show you, boy?”
He groaned. “You hate me. I hate you. Everybody would be pleased to see me go.”
“How many years have I fed you, clothed you, put a roof over your head? And how you repay me is to run off? You have a debt to me, boy.”
He shut his eyes. He was so very, very hungry. He realized, in that moment, that there was some truth to what his uncle was saying. He had been ill-treated here, but he had never starved. He had never fought for his very survival. They beat him here. They taunted him. But the wide world was indifferent to him.
There was hatred and there was indifference.
Hatred was preferable in some ways.
The steward had him whipped worse than ever, but he got fed afterwards. He didn’t think a meal had ever tasted so good, especially with the sting of the whip’s furrows cooling on his back, that sharp sensation of the lack of pain where pain has just been, the tingling of the aftermath of it, the pleasure of its end combined with food, a full belly, his warm bed above the stable…
He was glad to be home, that was the thing.
15
NOW, RACLAHAD WASnumbly shoveling the grain mush they were having for breakfast into her mouth. It was the same grain mush they’d had for dinner, but the toppings varied. In the morning, there was honey and molasses for it. In the evening, there was tomato catsup and vinegar and black pepper.
Aerhril watched her sister and tried to think of something to say.It’s all right. He made me sleep in his bed, but he did not touch me.
No, there was no point in getting into that with her younger sister.
You get used to the grain mush. Once we had no meat for the whole of the winter, and all we could eat was from the stores, and we all survived.
No, not that either.
She said nothing.
Eventually, her sister said something to her. “Have you found a way to get through to him?” she said.
Aerhril was surprised. “What are you speaking of?”
“You said that you knew him from when you were children together,” said Raclahad. “Have you found a way to get through to him? Can you get him to let us all go?”
Aerhril drew in a breath. “Oh, no, I do not think he’ll do that.”
Raclahad set her spoon down in the bowl with the mush.She sat back and stared into her abandoned breakfast. “Never? Not even if you work on him?”
Aerhril’s lips parted as she thought about it. “Well, he cannot keep us all here forever. He has some plan, as I understand it, well, the orcs have a plan. They are marching on Renegahan. They want to take over. Once they’ve done that…”
Now, the other women at the table were turning to her. Some looked shocked and horrified, others shrewdly interested, others angry.
“I don’t think there will be any reason to keep us here after they’ve accomplished their revolt is all,” she said. “I think they are keeping us here because they do not want us to spread the word.”
“What about the woman from Falls Keep, the one with the small babe,” spoke up Hafindel, who she saw was standing over the table, a bucket in one hand, a dry mop tucked over her shoulder. “They let her go.”
“So they did,” said Aerhril.
“Where did she go?” said Hafindel.
