Benjamin Tate: Well of Sorrows

But they hadn’t been. Just as they hadn’t been hired to help with the new buildings in Portstown, the mill or the granary.

He swallowed against the sourness in his stomach, against the faint taste of bile in the back of his throat, and said, “The barn is already up. The house isn’t finished, but-”

“But it’s been started,” his father finished for him as all four of them slumped back into their chairs.

Shay slammed his cards down onto the table. “Goddamned bloody cursed motherf-”

“Shay Jones!” his mother barked, and Shay leaped to his feet.

“What!” he spat, face livid. “I can’t swear? The goddamned Proprietor is sucking our lives away-purposefully!-and I can’t bloody curse? What’s going to happen? Is the blessed Diermani going to strike me dead where I stand? Is He going to send lightning to crisp me into ash? Because at this point I’d bloody well welcome it!”

“Shay,” Colin’s father said, and then repeated more harshly. “Shay! Sit down!”

Shay collapsed back into his seat, but the rage on his face didn’t change. “What did we cross the bloody Arduon for? Not for this.” He motioned toward the rest of the hut, toward all of Lean-to. “Not to live in a shack, begging for menial work on the docks. Not scouring the beaches for crabs or scavenging the plains for rodents, just to eat.” Leaning forward, he hissed, “I didn’t give up an apprenticeship with one of the finest guilds in Andover for this. Something has got to change or, Diermani is my witness, I’ll make it change.”

He hesitated, eyes locked on Tom, then shoved back from the table, the crate he’d been sitting on tilting and tumbling to the ground. He’d ducked out into the storm, the shutter thrown aside, before anyone had even drawn a breath.

No one moved; Sam and Paul sat with stunned looks on their faces, cards held before them. Thunder rumbled.

Then Ana set her butchering knife down and wiped her hands on an already bloody cloth. “Well,” she said. “I’d say Shay’s a little… angry.”

“He’s not the only one,” Sam said, tossing his cards into the center of the table.

Ana hesitated at the warning in Sam’s voice, then moved toward the entrance to the hut to replace the shutter.

“A large group of people in Lean-to have gotten tired of waiting,” Colin’s father said.

“Some of them have already left,” Sam added. “The Havensworths gave up and returned to Andover. They used the last of their money for passage. The Colts and the Ferruses both took ship to other settlements along the coast.”

“The Wrights packed up and headed inland, to settle their own land,” Ana said with a huff.

“And the Wrights haven’t been heard from since,” Colin’s father said meaningfully, watching his mother’s back. “I’m not a farmer, Ana. I’m a carpenter. I don’t think we’d survive long if I simply packed you and Colin up and headed off into the plains alone. And we don’t have any funds left to get passage back to Andover or even down the coast.”

After a moment, his father shifted, gaze dropping back to Sam and Paul. “But Shay is right. Sartori is doing everything he can to push us out, to force us to leave, and I’m tired of it. Tired of the restrictions, of the pressure. Of the threats that are becoming more and more overt, like the presence of the Armory. Something needs to change. Soon. If it doesn’t…”

Paul snorted. “Shay isn’t one to waste words when action will do. And he’s got plenty of followers. He’s been recruiting from the dissidents in Lean-to, the criminals who opted for the New World rather than the Armory in Andover, and there’s a lot more of them here than honest folk. There’s what? Thirty guildsmen here in Lean-to? There are four times as many of them. It could get ugly.”

Ana frowned as she returned, her eyes going to Colin. She hugged him from behind and murmured, “I don’t want you going into town, Colin. Not for the next few days.”

Colin pulled out of her embrace. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t know what Shay might do.” When Colin rolled his eyes, she added, “And because I said so! Now, go take this bucket of innards to Nate. He’ll make good use of it.”

“But it’s raining!”

“I don’t care,” his mother said, voice black, and she held out the bucket. “Now go! And stick to this area of Lean-to, where the craftsmen are!”

Colin sighed in exasperation, but he took the bucket. Because of the warning in his mother’s voice and the look he got from his father.

But he didn’t intend to stay out of Portstown.

The next day, Colin told his mother he was going hunting, but as soon as he left the outskirts of Lean-to, he cut around the edge of the shacks and tents and headed toward the town. He carried his satchel, hung over one shoulder, and his sling was tied to his forearm, the straps and pouch for the stone bundled up in his hand. He’d worn a long-sleeve shirt, so that the crisscrossed ties of the sling would be hidden, the cuff rolled back slightly so that it wouldn’t interfere with his throw. He wanted to be ready.

He entered the town from the north, a flutter of nervousness tightening in his gut as he passed through the outermost houses. Low stone fences surrounded the town now, separating the ramshackle Lean-to on the rise above from the land Sartori had given to some of the more influential members of the port. The stone walls-fieldstone mostly, although some had used the water-worn stone from the shore-marked the boundaries of the different estates. As Colin came upon a dirt lane, he peered over the low walls, curious, and tried not to scowl. These were the houses of the nobility, the tradesmen and lesser nobles, or those that fancied themselves nobles here in New Andover. The stone walls were broken by iron gates, and carriage houses and stables hid behind the main houses, even though there were only two carriages in all of Portstown. Ornamental gardens had been planted inside the walls, the trees young, barely twice Colin’s height, the hedges trimmed, the rose bushes pruned. Colin saw stable hands cleaning out the stables, a servant’s face appearing briefly in one window before vanishing, but no one else. Not here. Most of the regular people in Portstown would be down at the docks, or in the market in the center of town.

The lanes between the estates ended at the beginning of Water Street and the docks. Colin slowed as soon as he stepped onto the new planking of the wharf, his eyes immediately drawn to the Armory guardsmen that stood at the end of the first dock. Dressed in leather armor, white shirts with the Carrente Family crest, breeches, and a metal helm with points to the front and back, they stood out from the rest of the men that lined the wharf. Two of them carried swords, sheathed; the third carried a pike. One of the swordsmen grimaced as Colin moved forward onto the wharf, pointing with his pipe before puffing on it and blowing smoke in Colin’s direction. Colin frowned, and the guardsman snickered before turning away.

The docks weren’t empty, but they weren’t crowded either. A few men were toting crates from a stack at the end of the wharf, a boy younger than Colin sitting watch. Another group moved barrels marked with the Carrente Family sigil onto the back of a wagon, grunting and cursing. On the second dock, workers were readying for the arrival of another ship, although when Colin shaded his eyes and stared out at the dark waves of the ocean he couldn’t see anything on the horizon. No ships were berthed in Portstown, but numerous boats were out in the channel between Portstown and the outer banks of the Strand, the stretch of sand that protected the coast from the worst of the storms that came from the sea.

Colin hesitated at the end of the dock, watching the preparations long enough that the Armory guardsmen finally shifted and began drifting in his direction. Before they’d made it halfway to his position, he stepped off the wooden planks of the wharf back onto the dirt road and headed deeper into town.