and she shrieked as she took an involuntary step back. Kate looked as though she might fight, but then the other figure there pulled a dagger that shone far brighter than anything else there.
“This is our claim! Pick your own ruin, or I’ll bleed you.”
The sisters ran then, putting as much distance between them and the house as they could. With every step, Sophia was sure that she could hear the footsteps of knife-wielding thugs, or watchmen, or the nuns, somewhere behind them.
They walked until their legs hurt and the afternoon grew far too dark. At least they took solace that, with every step, they were one step farther from the orphanage.
Finally, they approached a slightly better part of town. For some reason, Kate’s face brightened at the sight of it.
“What is it?” Sophia asked.
“The penny library,” her sister replied. “We can slip in there. I sneak away sometimes, when the sisters send us on errands, and the librarian lets me in even though I don’t have the penny to pay.”
Sophia didn’t hold much hope of finding help there, but the truth was that she didn’t have any better ideas. She let Kate lead her, and they headed for a busy space where moneylenders mixed with advocates and there were even a few carriages mixed in with the normal horses and pedestrians.
The library was one of the larger buildings there. Sophia knew the story: that one of the nobles of the city had decided to educate the poor and left a portion of his fortune to build the kind of library that most just kept locked away in their country homes. Of course, charging a penny a visit still meant that the poorest couldn’t visit. Sophia had never had a penny. The nuns saw no reason to give their charges money.
She and Kate approached the entrance, and she saw an aging man sitting there, soft looking in slightly worn clothes, obviously as much a guard as a librarian. To Sophia’s surprise, he smiled as they approached. Sophia had never seen anyone happy to see her sister before.
“Young Kate,” he said. “It has been a while since you have been here. And you’ve brought a friend. Go through, go through. I will not stand in the way of knowledge. Earl Varrish’s son may have put a penny tax on knowledge, but the old earl never believed in it.”
He seemed genuine about it, but Kate was already shaking her head.
“That’s not what we need, Geoffrey,” Kate said. “My sister and I…we ran away from the orphanage.”
Sophia caught the shock on the older man’s face.
“No,” he said. “No, you must not do such a foolish thing.”
“It’s done,” Sophia said.
“Then you cannot be here,” Geoffrey insisted. “If the watch come, and they find you here with me, they may assume that I had some role in this.”
Sophia would have left then, but it seemed that Kate still wanted to try.
“Please, Geoffrey,” Kate said. “I need – ”
“You need to go back,” Geoffrey said. “Beg forgiveness. I have pity for your situation, but it is the situation fate has handed you. Go back before the watch catch you. I cannot help you. I may even be flogged for not alerting the watch that I saw you. That is all the kindness I can give you.”
His voice was harsh, and yet Sophia could see the kindness in his eyes, and that it pained him to say the words. Almost as if he were battling himself, as if he were putting on a show of being harsh only to drive home his point.
Even so, Kate looked crushed. Sophia hated to see her sister that way.
Sophia pulled her back, away from the library.
As they walked, Kate, head down, finally spoke.
“What now?” she asked.
The truth was that Sophia didn’t have an answer.
They kept walking, but by now, she was exhausted from walking so long. It was starting to rain, too, in that steady way that suggested it wouldn’t stop soon. Few places did rain the way Ashton did.
Sophia found herself gravitating down the sloped cobblestone streets toward the river that ran through the city. Sophia wasn’t sure what she hoped to find there, among the barges and the flat-bottomed punts. She doubted that wharf hands or whores were likely to be of any help to them, and those seemed to be the main things this part of the city held. But at least it was a destination. If nothing else, they could find a place to hide by its shores and watch the peaceful sailing of the ships, and dream of other places.
Eventually, Sophia spotted a shallow overhang near one of the city’s many bridges. She approached. She reeled from the stench, as did Kate, and the infestation of rats. But her tiredness made even the meanest scrap of shelter seem like a palace. They had to get out of the rain. They had to get out of sight. And right then, what else was there? They had to find a spot where no one else, even vagrants, dared to go. And this was it.
“Here?” Kate asked, in disgust. “Couldn’t we go back to the chimney?”
Sophia shook her head. She doubted that they would be able to find it again, and even if they could, it would be where any hunters would start to look. This was the best place they were going to find before the rain got worse and before night fell.
She settled down and tried to hide her tears for her sister’s sake.
Slowly, reluctantly, Kate sat down beside her, clutching her arms to her knees and rocking herself, as if to shut out the cruelty and barbarism and hopelessness of the world.
CHAPTER FOUR
In Kate’s dreams, her parents were still alive, and she was happy. Whenever she dreamed, it seemed that they were there, although the faces weren’t memories so much as constructed things, with only the locket to guide them. Kate hadn’t been old enough for more when it all changed.
She was in a house somewhere in the countryside, where the view from the leaded windows took in orchards and fields. Kate dreamed the warmth of the sun on her skin, the gentle breeze that ruffled through the leaves outside.
The next part never seemed to make sense. She didn’t know enough of the details, or she hadn’t remembered them right. She tried to force her dream to give her the whole story of what had happened, but it gave her fragments instead:
An open window, with stars outside. Her sister’s hand, Sophia’s voice in her head, telling her to hide. Looking for their parents through the maze of the house…
Hiding through the house in the dark. Hearing the sounds of someone moving about there. There was light beyond, even though it was night outside. She felt she was close, on the verge of discovering what finally happened to their parents that night. The light from the window started to grow brighter, and brighter, and —
“Wake up,” Sophia said, shaking her. “You’re dreaming, Kate.”
Kate’s eyes flickered open resentfully. Dreams were always so much better than the world she lived in.
She squinted at the light. Impossibly, morning had arrived. Her first day ever sleeping a full night outside the stench and screams of the orphanage’s walls, her first morning ever waking up somewhere, anywhere, else. Even in a dank place
