“Shitting on their own doorstep, ’twould be,” said the man at the adjoining table.
“Josef! Not in front of the ...” the bearded man glanced at me doubtfully, “lady.”
“Something’s going on, that’s for certain,” said the bearded man, warming to his subject. The slowly descending level of his ale was probably helping with this, also. “There’s something they’re not telling us. We’ve been supplying them with food for as long as anyone can remember, and now they suddenly don’t need any? Something has changed.”
Somethinghadchanged. More sorceresses than ever before had come through our village in the past few months. And then, the most surprising change of all.
“Have you ever seen ...” I hesitated, “a male magic-worker?”
They all three raised their eyebrows and pursed their lips.
“No such thing,” said Josef, and the others nodded.
“Never been heard of,” said the bald man.
“Well,” said the bearded man, “if there were one, then that’s just one more of the strangenesses. Something’s up, no doubt.” He leaned back in his chair so that the wood creaked ominously.
“I’ve heard rumors,” I said. “But you said they’re canceling their orders. Does that mean they’ll beharvestinghere too?”
There was a collective shiver.
“My granny said they don’t take the actual heart out of your chest,” said Josef. “It’s a mettyfor, like.”
We all stared at him.
“Mighty big word,” said the bald man.
“What’s that when it’s at home?” asked the bearded man.
“Like, something that means something else.” Josef looked embarrassed. “Like, they take part of you away, but we call it the heart because we don’t know what else to call it.”
“Get away with you,” the bald man said. “They rip the heart from your chest, all right? Blood and everything. My granny told me.”
“I heard that they don’t need to take you at all,” Josef said. “That they can just call you, like. They set eyes on you once, and you’ll come running.”
The oily soup churned in my belly. “And then what happens?” I asked, keeping my voice even.
“No one knows,” said Josef.
Wonderful. This close to the city and still no real answers as to what exactly had been done to me, or what would happen next.
“So,” asked Josef, and by now he was drunk enough to try winking even at me. “What brings you here?”
“Just passing through,” I said, and turned my back before he got any bright ideas.
A little of my gruel was left, but I couldn’t bring myself to stomach it after all that talk. Instead, I wandered outside to gulp a little of the manure-scented night air and settle myself a minute. I had to think about what I’d heard.
I had no idea that arrangements like those of the fruits and vegetables were in place, and now that I knew it, I felt rage bubbling up in my gut along with the soup.
So not everyone had to sacrifice their hearts to the sorceresses? Just my village, and others like it, while places like this grew their turnips and lived without that creeping dread, no less fearful because it was so unformed?
Another thought twisted my gut: wewerethe turnips, sitting out there on the borderlands, no more than vegetables to be harvested or discarded as the city folk saw fit.
6
The cart driver let me down right inside the city gates. We had been waved through by guards with plumed helmets and muddied boots, the buttons on their coats all shined up like pennies.
At first I thought it was all terribly grand, looking up at the ornate masonry, but as soon as we rumbled out from under the archway, I saw the midden piles and the narrow streets, houses leaning in on each other like gossiping neighbors, and any awe I might have felt disappeared right quick.
