Janice Hardy - The Pain Merchants

The League! That’s where I’d seen him, passing behind the Elder and the wards.

The mango soured in my mouth. A League man overhears that I can shift and starts following me? What if he was a Tracker? I hadn’t heard talk of any since their kidnapping spree during the war. Rumours said they tracked for us and the Duke, so the Healers they grabbed never knew which side they might wind up healing. Folks whispered about Trackers like they whispered about marsh spirits and the haunted barge wreck. Except Trackers were real.

Keep chewing. Don’t let on you’ve seen him . Too close to the marshes to risk another dip in a canal. Would he try to grab me in the open or—

“Shoo, girl!” Two more little words that always meant trouble for me. Madame Trivent thumped me on the head with her broom. The straw bristles stabbed behind my ears and yanked some hair out.

My mango dropped to the ground. I snatched it back and scrambled to my feet, ducking her wide swings. “I’m going, I’m going.”

“Filthy ’Veg. Don’t you be bothering my customers.” She swept me down the walk like dust and shoved me into the street. “Don’t come back!”

Folks put extra steps between me and them as they passed. The soldiers didn’t like fuss, and trouble had a nasty way of sticking to other people like flung mud. Mama used to say the rock in the river never knows the misery of the rock in the sun, but I’d change places with that river rock. Under the water, the river rock had protection against a fancy League Tracker.

Who was now gone.

I turned a slow circle, but caught no glimpse of yellow and green silk behind bush, tree or corner. Hunger’ll play with your mind, but I didn’t think I’d imagined him.

I needed to be a river rock.

Slouching, I slipped into a wave of refugees who hadn’t seen me booted off and didn’t shy away. Home sounded like a good idea. If I stayed low, stayed quiet, maybe the fancy man would leave me alone.

Even a rock knew that was a foolish dream. Trackers didn’t let you go. They dragged you off in the middle of the night and no one ever saw you again. Made you heal the soldiers. Keep the rebellion alive. Fight the Duke. Chase him out of Geveg. Keep the pynvium in Geveg.

Hadn’t worked.

But I was useless to the League, and Geveg had no more soldiers to heal and fight. The League didn’t even know who I was. I rarely spoke to anyone there except Tali and she wouldn’t reveal me. How could—

I sucked in a breath. The north-gate guards. They knew me. They’d seen me run out earlier, scared as a scalded cat.

I ran the last block to Millie’s boarding house. It sat on the edge of Pond End Canal not far from where the chicken ranchers tossed their rubbish. The view wasn’t bad and the smell kept it cheap. I thumped up the creaky stairs to my room on the third floor.

My door was pegged shut.

Tears bubbled up a drop faster than the sobs. I was only a day late on my rent. Millie had never pegged me out for being a day late before.

“You have your board money?” Millie stood on the landing at the end of the hall, her skinny brown arms folded tight across her chest. The woman had ears to make a bat jealous.

“I will by this evening, I swear.”

She tossed her hands up and scoffed, then started back down the stairs. “I’ve got your gear. Come and get it before I sell it.”

“Millie, please, give me a few hours. I’ll pay soon as the boats come in.”

“I have three families wanting the room.”

“Please, I’m good for it, you know I am. I’ll pay double tomorrow.”

“Got folks willing to pay that now.” She shoved my clothes basket into my hands, then wiped her palms on her apron. White flour clouds puffed outward. “Go and stay with your sister in her fancy dorm room.”

Millie knew the League did bed checks. She rubbed my nose in it cos the League had turned her son away. Not enough talent, they said. Couldn’t heal a grazed knee. He’d even been turned away by the pain merchants, and Takers didn’t need much talent to work there . Some of the new swears I’d learned came to mind, but I stilled my tongue. Millie had the cheapest rooms. Throw me out today, take me in tomorrow, and she’d never think twice about either. She was also the only boarding house in Geveg that believed me when I said I was seventeen and old enough to rent.

I shuffled back to the street, my fingers gripping the basket filled with everything I owned. Two shirts, a skirt and three unmatched socks. I lifted my chin. Tears dripped off on to my hands. I had half a day to find work. Maybe I could untangle nets through the night. Barnikoff might let me sleep in his shed if I tidied it up. And there was always—

Breath died in my throat.

Saints save me, the fancy man was back.

S trength left my legs and I flopped into the weeds beside Millie’s path. I sat cross-legged, basket in my lap, chin on the basket. The tears hadn’t stopped and they dripped tap tap tap on the wicker.

The fancy man kept watching. Watched me sit and cry. Open my basket and pull out a sock. Blow my nose on it. Put it back. Watched me watching him. He never moved. I’m not sure he even blinked.

Gave me shiverfeet.

“Nya?”

I yelped. So did the pigtailed girl I hadn’t noticed walk up beside me. A flock of bright waterbirds at the lake’s edge took flight, dozens of tiny wings flapping like sheets in a windstorm.

“Enzie!” I scolded. She’d shared a room with Tali for a while until a bed opened up in the wards’ area, the orphanage part of the League where they took in potential Healers. I’d never seen her without her League uniform on before. She looked more like a little girl with her brown hair bound in ribbons, and a simple grey shirt and trousers like mine. Hers were newer though and didn’t have patches on the knees and elbows. “For the love of Saint Saea, don’t sneak up on folks like that.”

“Sorry, Nya.” Enzie settled into the weeds beside me. “Tali asked me to give you a message.”

My chill returned. “Is she OK?” If she got into trouble because of me, I’d throw myself to the crocs right there.

Enzie nodded. “She wants you to meet her at the pretty circle at three. Under the tree.”

The flower gardens. Tali had called it “the pretty circle” when she was four. We’d had picnics there and sat on a soft blue blanket under the biggest fig tree I’d ever seen.

“What’s going on, Enzie?” Tali had never been sneaky before. She either spoke her mind clearly or didn’t speak it at all.

“I don’t know.” Her green eyes looked away and she sucked in her bottom lip.

“You can tell me.”

“I don’t know, honest. But I’m scared anyway.”

I leaned over and hugged her. Poor girl. She was only ten. She had talent, even if she couldn’t use it for two more years. It hummed in her like the thrum of a bridge when the soldiers marched over it. “It’s OK, Enzie.”

She sniffled and clung to me. I rubbed her back in small circles. The fancy man kept watching. I stared at him hard, putting a dare into it, though I couldn’t say what the challenge was.

Whatever he saw in it, he declined. He turned and walked away.

I hugged Enzie tighter, suddenly just as scared as she and not knowing why.

I walked the full three miles across Geveg to the gardens, on the opposite side of the island from Millie’s. Though the gardens were public property, they were inside the aristocrats’ district. Powdered women with pearls braided through their black, piled hair glared at me as I headed for the gates. Baseeri soldiers stood watch at all four entrances and kept out the folks aristocrats didn’t like seeing—which pretty much meant everyone who wasn’t from Baseer. They weren’t supposed to by law, and sometimes you could talk your way in if you looked clean and sharp and didn’t mumble your request, but nobody went in carrying a clothes basket. Squatters were not allowed under any circumstances.