002-2：The Emberstone Ring
1030 Words
Near dawn the rain came.
It did not begin gently. The sky opened. Water hammered the road, flattened her hair to her skull, soaked through her dress and shift and skin. Mud climbed her ankles. Her teeth chattered so violently that her jaw ached. She cried then, not loudly, not with any grace, but because rain hid tears and because there was no one left to see.
Alderwick is hell, she thought.
Not metaphor. Not complaint. A simple conclusion reached after years of evidence.
And tonight I am leaving it.
By morning she could barely walk.
The rain blurred the world. Her left eye had swollen almost shut. Feverish cold ran under her skin, and the bean cakes in her bundle had softened into sour lumps. She knew, with the detached clarity of exhaustion, that she might survive Garrick only to die in a ditch.
Then she heard hooves.
A cart emerged from the rain, a narrow farm cart covered with a patched awning. Mara stumbled into the road and lifted both arms.
"Please!"
Her voice broke into nothing. She had not spoken all night. The rain swallowed the sound.
The cart rolled past, close enough that mud sprayed across her skirt.
Mara dragged breath into her throat and screamed.
It came out raw and animal, a sound she would never have made if dignity had still been useful. The driver pulled the horse short.
An old woman peered from beneath the awning. "Dawn preserve us. What happened to you?"
"A ride," Mara rasped. "To town."
The woman looked at the mud on Mara's clothes, then at the floor of the cart. Pity and irritation fought across her face. Irritation won first.
"We are late for my granddaughter's wedding."
"I can pay."
"Can you?"
Mara tore the silver chain from the ring and held it out. "This. And one silver when we reach town."
The old woman squinted. "That chain is not worth two."
"It is worth more than leaving me in the road."
The driver's shoulders shook. Perhaps he laughed; perhaps he coughed. The old woman sighed as if she had been burdened with unreasonable generosity.
"Get in, then. But keep to the corner."
Mara climbed in and folded herself beneath the awning. The cart smelled of damp wool, onions, and old straw. The old woman complained for half the journey about mud, girls who ran from home, and the price of horse feed. Mara answered every complaint softly. She could not afford pride. She could not afford sleep either, not until she knew where they were taking her.
The rain thinned by the time the cart reached Alderwick town.
Mara paid with the chain and argued back one silver and five coppers from the woman by inventing a large friend who would be arriving shortly to settle accounts. The lie was clumsy. The old woman did not believe it. But she was late, and Mara was desperate in a way that made prolonged bargaining inconvenient.
Mara ran.
Bess had said dawn. The guards were leaving at dawn. Dawn had already become morning.
She reached the north yard breathless and shaking.
The convoy was larger than she expected: twelve wagons, spare horses, mule teams, crates roped under canvas, Rooke men shouting over one another as they checked harness and counted cargo. Armed guards moved through the yard with the bored impatience of men used to being obeyed.
A mercenary stepped in front of Mara. "This is not a place for children."
"I am looking for Bess Tanner."
"Never heard of her."
"Please. She is traveling with you."
He looked at her soaked clothes, the bruise rising around her eye, the bundle clutched against her ribs. "Go home."
Mara almost laughed.
Then she saw Bess near the third wagon, wrapped in a borrowed cloak, a small bundle under one arm.
"Bess!"
Bess turned. Her eyebrows flew up. "Saints, Mara. You look like something dragged from a pond."
"Take me with you."
Bess's smile vanished. "No."
"Please."
"No. I told you yesterday."
The mercenary folded his arms. "This is your trouble?"
Mara opened her fist. One silver. Five coppers. The ring.
"I can pay something," she said. "I can wash, cook, mend. I worked for the Rookes four years. I will not slow you down."
The mercenary knocked the coins from her hand with the back of two fingers. "Passage is four crowns."
Mara bent to gather the money, throat closing. "I have this."
She held out Mira's ring.
She expected him to laugh.
He did not.
His expression sharpened, all mockery gone. He took the ring and turned it toward the weak sun. The cloudy red stone caught one ember of light and held it.
"Where did you get this?"
"It was my mother's."
He closed his hand around it. "Wait here."
Then he walked toward the front of the convoy.
Bess stared after him, then rounded on Mara. "What have you done?"
"Will he steal it?"
"That ugly village trinket?" Bess rolled her eyes, but unease had entered her voice. "No one with city boots wants your mother's cheap ring."
At the head of the convoy, the mercenary captain did.
Captain Rusk was a massive man with a scar running down the bridge of his nose. He took the ring, examined it, and swore under his breath.
"Emberstone," the first mercenary said. "Small, low purity."
"Still emberstone." Rusk smiled. "In Gethra, this buys more than a seat in straw."
"She says it was her mother's."
"Then her mother had interesting friends." Rusk pocketed the ring. "Put the girl in the fodder wagon. If she dies on the road, do not let it delay us."
So Mara bought passage to Gethra with a jewel she had never known was valuable, and no one bothered to tell her what she had paid.
The convoy left Alderwick under a wet white sky.
Mara lay in the fodder wagon among cut hay and old sacks. The motion of the wheels rocked through her bones. She meant to stay awake. She meant to watch the road, watch the men, watch Bess, watch everything.
Instead she fell into sleep so deep it felt like drowning.
- Writer
