Shadow Blessed (The Shadow Accords Book 1) Read online

  But she still wouldn’t have answers about why her parents were gone. Her father hadn’t come for her. Didn’t that mean he wouldn’t? If he wasn’t the man she’d seen captured, and if he remained free, why hadn’t he found her by now?

  The only reason was that he couldn’t.

  He was gone, like her mother.

  Carth fought against tears, not wanting to break down. Not here, and not until she was safe, but where would she ever be safe again?

  She had settled back into the shadows, tears welling in her eyes, when a hand grabbed her shoulder.

  She spun, thrusting the knife out. An older man with soft gray eyes caught her wrist and twisted it, forcing the knife away.

  “Easy,” he said. “You’re the one hiding behind my catch.”

  Carth jerked her hand back, and he let it go. She held on to the knife but lowered it so that it wasn’t pointing at him.

  “What are you doing here?” the man asked.

  Carth shook her head. The A’ras had disappeared along the street. Anything she might have thought about doing faded from her mind. “Nothing.”

  “Seems to me that a girl your age with a knife isn’t doing ‘nothing.’ You going to tell me what you thought you might be up to, or do I have to notify the A’ras?”

  She paled. “I didn’t do anything.”

  The man shrugged. “Mayhap not, but they can throw you in the stocks until you answer.”

  Carth’s eyes widened. “They wouldn’t do that.”

  “You sure about that? Girl like you”—he motioned to her light blue dress, now stained from creeping about the city—“looks like you ain’t never seen any real suffering. I think you might be surprised at what will happen until your parents come for you.”

  Carth started sobbing.

  She tried controlling it, tried swallowing back the tears and the sadness and the fear, but she couldn’t. Now that she had stopped, and now that no one seemed to be following her, it spilled from her.

  “Aww, hey, now. I don’t mean to upset you. Thought you might be one of the thieves sneaking off with my potatoes and dried fish.” He stepped back and eyed Carth. “From the looks of you, that don’t seem to be the case. Run along now to your folks and I’ll leave you be.”

  As the man started to turn, Carth sobbed even more.

  He paused and turned back to her. “What is it, girl?”

  She tried stopping the tears, but failed. She took a step back and tripped over the hem of her dress, falling into a puddle of foul-smelling water that only made her cry more. Rather than moving, she wrapped her arms around her legs and cried.

  When the man scooped her up, she didn’t fight. And she didn’t struggle when he carried her down the street. Her parents would have been disappointed. All the lessons they had tried to teach her disappeared in one burst of tears.

  3

  A bell tinkled when the man pushed open a door, but Carth still didn’t look up. The man hadn’t carried her far, and she still had her knife. This close to him, she could stab him with it were she to need to, but the man didn’t seem like he wanted to harm her.

  The inside of the building he’d entered smelled of salt and meat and faintly of bread. Carth’s stomach rumbled and she realized that she hadn’t eaten since early in the morning, long before she’d seen her mother lying unmoving on the street.

  At the thought of her mother, she started crying again.

  “Hal, you don’t be bringing any more strays in here.”

  Carth blinked at the sound of a woman’s voice. Through the tears, she saw a wider woman with a long gray robe that brushed the floor. The woman held the long handle of a broom in her meaty fists, but her eyes were soft and warm and the frown on her mouth looked more gentle than angry.

  “Not a stray, Vera. Found this girl outside the tavern. Thought she might be one of the damned thieves keep taking our supplies. Don’t think that’s the case at all. When I mentioned her parents, she got all weepy. Think she might be with the—”

  “Shh,” Vera said, slipping her arms underneath Carth and pulling her away from Hal. “You scared the girl!”

  “Like I said, I thought she was one of the thieves.”

  “You don’t know that there are thieves, Haldon Marchon! More likely, you just forgot to count the boxes right.”

  “I keep my inventory sheets straight. I can tell you whether anything is missing, and I know that there are crates that aren’t accounted for.”

  “And you think this girl is able to drag away one of your crates?”

  “Her?” Hal stood next to Vera and studied Carth. “Mayhap not, Vera. She’s barely any bigger than the crates. I shouldn’t have scared her like I did.”

  “I wasn’t scared,” Carth said softly.

  “What did you say to her that got her all blubberin’ like this? You can be sharp with your tongue, Hal!”

  “You should talk. I said nothing except that I’d call the A’ras. Thought that might run her off more than anything. I didn’t want to get her blubbering.”

  “The A’ras? You don’t want the attention any more than she does, I don’t think.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Then what is? You think that lot can find anything, especially what with all the hassle they have keeping them in line?”

  “Careful, Vera,” Hal said in a whisper.

  “They don’t have ears in here. Tavern is empty, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “I know they haven’t got ears in the tavern, but that’s not the point.”

  Carth realized he was looking at her. “I wasn’t scared,” she said again.

  Vera carried Carth to a chair and settled her into it. She reached for a steaming pot and poured spiced tea into a chipped ceramic mug. The paint along the rim had faded to a light pink. Carth wondered if it would have been almost maroon before, the same color as the sashes the A’ras wore.

  The older woman took a seat on a bench wide enough to accommodate her girth and leaned forward until she was barely a hand away from Carth. “Don’t let old Hal frighten you, girl. He talks mean, but he has a soft heart. Trust Vera on that.”

  Carth brushed her braid behind her head, watching Vera as she did. The old woman had gentle features and real warmth to her light blue eyes.

  “Why do you still cry?” Vera asked. “I told you I won’t let Hal harm you.”

  Carth shook her head. Even thinking of trying to answer made her throat swell. She didn’t know these people. All she wanted was to find her father, but if her father had been safe, wouldn’t he have come to the meeting place and found her? The fact that he hadn’t made the alternative—that the A’ras had captured him—more likely.

  She started sobbing again and wiped at her eyes with her fist, trying to dry them.

  “Aw, see what you did now?” Hal said from behind Vera. “Now it’s your fault she’s all watery like this.”

  Vera waggled her finger at Hal. “You just leave us alone here, Haldon. I’ll sort this out and tell you what you did wrong.”

  “I ain’t done nothing wrong,” Hal said.

  “We’ll see.”

  Hal patted Vera on the shoulders and leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. Vera shooed him away with her hand. He shook his head. “It’s my tavern!”

  “And who runs the kitchen?” she demanded, fixing him with a harsh stare. “It’s as much mine as yours, and don’t you forget that.”

  “How can I when you don’t let me forget anything?”

  Hal’s boots thumped over the floorboards and then Carth heard the sound of the bell tinkling over the door before it swung shut.

  Vera let out a soft huff. “Damn that man and his strays.”

  Carth managed to swallow, forcing back the lump in her throat. “Strays?”

  Vera patted the table and shook her head. “You think you’re the first one he’s brought in? All that fighting outside the city brings them in, but I think the man has a way of attracting them, I do. Better
here than the alternative, the gods know that’s for sure,” Vera sighed. “Come on. If you’re going to be with us, then it’s best that you get settled in. I can see you been through something today. We’ll let you rest and then you’ll have to start earning your keep.”

  “How? Why?” she asked.

  The old woman groaned as she stood, the bench scraping across the wood floor with a scream, and waited for Carth to follow. “We’ll talk about that later. For now, you come along.”

  Carth glanced at the cup of tea and took a small sip before standing and following Vera. With her father missing and her mother dead, what choice did she have?

  Carth awoke to a thumping in the small room Vera had left her in. There were no windows in the room, a fact that had left Carth’s heart beating wildly when she saw Vera intended to leave her here, but the top bunk she’d pointed for her to take appeared clean, and the mattress was soft enough, if not her own. She’d managed to sleep, though she didn’t know how long.

  The door to the room slammed open and two children raced in. Carth rolled back in the bed, trying to hide herself from them as long as possible. One of the children—a boy who looked no older than nine or ten, with a hooked nose and lanky hair—dropped onto the bed beneath her own. Another, a younger boy with curly brown hair, took the bed opposite, sitting almost carefully.

  “Sleep? How she think we gonna sleep?” the boy beneath her said.

  “She said you should sleep,” the other corrected.

  “Why you always gotta be so proper, Kel? You live down by the docks the same as me.”

  Kel crawled back into the bed so that Carth couldn’t see him as clearly. “Not for long. I’m going to find them.”

  “You’re here for the same reason as me, and until Hal finds your family, you’ll be here. Don’ forget that we’re strays. You’re ’bout as likely to find your pa as I’m to find Assage.”

  “Careful,” Kel said. “You shouldn’t mention the gods so easily.”

  The other boy grunted. One of his feet started kicking the wall in a steady rhythmic way. Thump. Thump-thump. Thump. “Not my god, now, is he? This damn place isn’t mine, is it?”

  Carth crawled forward, close enough that she could peer over the edge of the bed. Kel rested with his knees bent to his chest, staring blankly forward. He had on tattered pants and his boots looked to be too large for his feet, but it was the introspective way he sat that caught Carth’s attention.

  “Assage is the one true god,” Kel said.

  The other boy kicked the wall harder and laughed. “One god? Maybe since we came here, but my family taught me to worship the three. That’s why my hands are nimble. It keeps the gods happy.”

  “What we do won’t make any god happy.”

  The other boy kicked the wall again. “Havin’ a full belly makes me happy, and if that’s what they ask…”

  “What happens when you’re caught, Etan? What then?”

  “You don’t get caught. That’s what.”

  Kel sat silently, not prodded further into the conversation.

  Carth moved toward the back wall, trying to stay out of sight. Were these the other strays Vera had mentioned? If they were, what did Vera and Hal ask of them? They seemed well enough, and unharmed, that whatever they wanted couldn’t be all bad, could it?

  “Now you’re going silent on me?” Etan asked. He kicked the wall again, and it sounded like it moved up the wall, toward the upper bunk. There came a kick beneath her, one that struck the bottom of the bunk and sent her into the air. Carth bit back her reaction, but must have said something. Etan scrambled from the lower bunk and stood on the edge, peering at Carth. “What have we got here?” His breath smelled of dried meat, a foul odor that drifted to her. Etan looked over his shoulder toward Kel. “We got another one here, Kel. Climb up here and take a look.”

  Carth gripped the knife in her fist. She’d been afraid to release it when she’d been with Vera, and Hal must have known but hadn’t seemed to care about the fact that she had one of the A’ras’s knives. She held it ready, not sure what Etan would try.

  “Leave him be, Etan. You know what the last one ended up being like.”

  Etan smirked. “Not a him this time. Get up here and look!”

  Carth heard the sound of Kel climbing from his lower bunk and then he stood next to Etan, his hair rising into view first. He had deep brown eyes that were the color of the dirt tilled on farms outside the city. When he breathed out, his breath smelled of mint or spices, odors that reminded her of the tea Vera had served.

  “What you think, Kel? That’s a girl, isn’t it?”

  Carth tucked the knife into her sleeve and swung her legs around, making a point of kicking toward Etan as she did. He had to jump away so that she didn’t catch him with her sandaled feet. “I am a girl,” she said.

  Kel covered his mouth as he laughed and jumped down. Etan collected himself pretty quickly and punched Kel in the shoulder. “See? What did I tell you! Where do you think she came from? She’s not Reshian like us—”

  Kel cut him off with a shake of his head. “Maybe we ask her?”

  Etan turned his attention to Carth and his eyes narrowed. “Where did you come from, girl?”

  First Vera and Hal, and now these two kept addressing her as girl? “I have a name.”

  “What is it?” Kel asked.

  Etan leaned forward as he waited for her to answer.

  She glanced from one to the other. What did it matter if she shared her name with them? She wouldn’t be here long. Now that she’d rested—and managed to stop crying—she knew that she couldn’t stay here. She still didn’t—and couldn’t—believe that her father was missing. He might not have shown at their meeting place, but that didn’t mean something had happened to him. If he wasn’t there, she might be able to find him at their home.

  “See? Can’t even answer right.”

  “My name is Carth,” she said.

  “Carth?” Etan repeated the name, adding a harsher sound to the beginning of her name than was supposed to be there. Her mother always told her that she had a beautiful name, one that came from their homeland, a place they had left long ago. Carth might not have ever met anyone else with a name like hers, but she believed her mother.

  Yet her full name was too much, too long for her. Carth suited her in ways that Carthenne did not.

  She jumped down from the top bunk. From above, Etan had looked smaller than her, but now that she was down here, she realized that he stood at least a hand higher. Kel was closer in height to her, taller if she counted how high his hair stood.

  Etan smirked at her again. “How’d you end up here, Carth?” he asked.

  “An accident,” she said.

  She started forward, but Etan didn’t move.

  Kel glared at him, but the taller boy ignored it. “What kind of accident leaves a girl down here by the docks?”

  “What kind of thing leaves a boy like you down here by the docks?” she asked back. But she knew the answer to that. Even though she’d only been in Nyaesh six months, she knew that boys near the docks were either beggars, often orphans from the war, or they worked as thieves. She’d overheard her father speaking of the Thevers, a band of smugglers the A’ras never managed to corral—too busy with their fight outside the city, Carth supposed—and she knew they came in and out of the river port and that many of their members came from the boys along the docks. Was that what Etan and Kel were?

  “Probably the same as you,” Etan shot back. “What are you hiding from?”

  “I’m not hiding from anything,” she said.

  Etan laughed. “No? Then what are you doing here, if you’re not hiding from nothing? Maybe you think you’re too good to be down here. Next you’re gonna tell me that you don’t belong.”

  “I don’t belong.”

  Etan laughed again. “Keep tellin’ yourself that. Lyin’ don’t make the truth any easier to bear, at least that’s what my ma used to tell me. What kind of lies
did your ma tell you?”

  Carth swallowed the lump that came to her throat, and Etan laughed as she pushed past him and rushed to the door.

  Outside, she found a long hall. Carth hurried along the hall and threw open the door at the end. She hurried through another couple of doors before reaching one that finally led outside. A nearly full moon shone overhead, and a chill wind gusted in from the river, making her wish that she had a coat, but she hadn’t needed one in the warmth of the morning when she’d left her home.

  She heard the sound of boots along the cobbles behind her and ducked into an alley, glancing back to see Kel chasing her. He looked up the street, missing her hiding place in the shadows, and started up. Carth hesitated long enough for him to disappear, and then ran the opposite direction, racing away from the docks and toward her home, praying that her father would be there.

  Carth sat in a crumpled heap outside the only home she had ever known. As she had run back toward the house, she’d allowed herself the growing excitement and belief that her father would be there, waiting with a fire glowing in the hearth, a stew bubbling softly in the flames, preparing herself for his anger and frustration, but ultimately his relief that she’d returned.

  The home had been empty.

  Not only empty, but someone else had been there before her, tearing through her family’s belongings, leaving clothing ripped and the books her mother had painstakingly collected over the years and carted with them as they moved from city to city torn and thrown to the ground. Other belongings were strewn across the floor and then trampled underfoot. Her father had not been here—if he had, he would not have left it like this.

  She had paused in the back room, sitting on her parents’ bed, letting even more tears come. They streaked down her face even now, wet reminders of what she’d lost. But they were the last. She would cry no more.

  Whoever had been here had searched for something. Carth didn’t know what might be valuable to anyone else. The only things in the home of worth were the books, and they would only be valuable to certain people. Carth searched through the pile on the floor, realizing that three were missing—three that her mother had prized above all else because they had come with her when she’d left Ih-lash. She searched through the piles, wondering if whoever had been here might have taken them, before remembering the other storage place her mother had used.