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I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do with the discards, but I sweep the grindings into a length of muslin and wrap it up to tuck it into my pack.
I don’t have a plan. I don’t even have an idea, really. I just have rage and sorrow burning up my insides.
“Well, that’s useless,” Mistress Solomon says. “The rest of the month, I’ll be collecting your wages.”
My head snaps up. I may be wrapped up in sorrow, but I do know that I can’t afford to lose more than half a month’s income. “Let me make the delivery,” I say to her. “Please don’t take the thimbleweed from my pay.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Tessa.” She’s already moving away.
“Please?” I say. “Surely a courier to the Royal Sector would cost more.”
She glances back at me. She’ll do anything to avoid paying for something.
I rest a hand over my stomach for half a second, until her eyes follow the motion, and then I jerk it away and clear my throat.
“Oh, Tessa,” breathes Karri. “I wish you’d told me.”
I swallow. I didn’t consider that I’d be lying to Karri. She’s so good and kind and warm that it feels like a crime.
“He abandoned you, didn’t he?” she says knowingly, and I realize she’s remembering our talk of how so many of the smugglers are just stringing stupid girls along.
Abandoned me. No. Wes didn’t abandon me. If anything, I abandoned him. My throat closes up again.
Karri reaches out and gives my hand a squeeze. “You come round to the house tomorrow, and Mother will brew you some of her tea for the early sickness. She swears it helps.”
Maybe it’s safer if this is what she believes—that I’m just a silly girl who made a silly mistake, but now it’s all over. I have to sniff back waiting tears. “That’s very . . . ?very nice. Thank you.”
Mistress Solomon draws herself up. She likely has a few thoughts about an unmarried girl getting herself into such a situation, but after Karri has been so kind, she likely doesn’t want to turn down my request. “Very well, Tessa,” she says. “If you’re sure you’re feeling up to it.”
In my willingness to make a delivery to the Royal Sector, I didn’t consider that it would require passing the gates where Wes’s body hangs, and it doesn’t come to mind until the smell hits me.
I stop short on the path. My mouth goes dry. I can’t do this.
I don’t even know what I was going to do.
Deliver a package. That’s why I’m here. That’s what I need to do.
The discarded powders wrapped up in a muslin bundle can just sit in my apothecary pack next to my record books and the delivery I’m to make. I’ll toss them into a fire. Then I’ll toss myself into a fire.
An elderly man is driving a donkey with a small cart, and he glances at me as he goes past. “You get used to it after a while,” he says.
No. I won’t. And we shouldn’t. We shouldn’t get used to this.
Wes wouldn’t hesitate. He didn’t hesitate. He leapt over that wall because I needed him to. Because I wanted him to.
I square my shoulders and walk. There’s a horrific buzzing in the air that finds my ears before I reach the gate, and it’s not until I round the bend that I realize what the sound is: flies. They’re everywhere, in the air, on the trees, feasting on the bodies—because of course there are more than one now.
There are six. I can’t tell which were men and which were women.
Ican tell Wes, though. His body has begun to decompose, the daggers beginning to slip from the loosened tissues of his eyes. The flower is gone. The rope of the treble hook has sunk into the gray skin of his wrist.
“It’s not Wes,” I breathe to myself. “It’s not Wes.”
Because it’s not. It’s a corpse. A body. Not the rogue who used to tease me and help me and protect me. Not the young man who pulled me against him and promised to return in an hour.
Do not cry. I don’t.
Flies cling to me as I force my feet forward. I swat them away forcefully. One of the gate guards steps forward, swatting at flies himself. Sweat sits in a sheen on his brow, and he looks bored and irritated. I know I would be.
