Dead But Once by Auston Habershaw

Author:Auston Habershaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-04-17T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Belated Epiphanies

After leaving the Wheel and Serpent, it was well past sunset by the time Myreon finally decided they could stop dodging from alley to alley and sit down to rest. The place was a bustling soup kitchen catering to day-laborers—little more than a patched canvas awning set up over a muddy stretch of earth behind a tiny shack containing nothing but a chimney, a cauldron, and an old woman with a ladle. Dinner was a copper—two if you wanted a bit of hard roll to dip in the watery broth. Myreon spent the two for both her and Bree.

There were two long tables set beneath the awning, each with a pair of benches. They were packed with men in functional, filthy clothing who ranged in age from no older than Artus to no younger than her great grandfather. As the only women in the crowd, remaining inconspicuous would have been impossible, were it not for the shroud she had put over both of them. To the men, she looked like a young man of twenty with an honest face and a sturdy frame, and Bree looked like a bent-backed old man. They squeezed themselves into a spot on the bench. The men on either side were gray-bearded and bore more than a few scars on their arms, faces, and hands. They smelled like wet sheep.

“You have a look out, fella,” the man to her right said, nudging her. “Press-gang’s been by already today.”

Myreon managed a shallow smile. “Thanks.”

The man to Bree’s left spat in his soup for some reason and swished it around a bit before drinking. “Vora men. Just about picked us clean of the strongest backs by now. Next thing they’ll be coming for us.”

The first man grunted. “Done my time already, Stran. Got the paper what proves it, too.”

Stran shrugged, which meant Bree was forced to shrug as well as his arm was so close to hers. “I was there when you got it, Marsh. That battle up in Lake Country, laying siege to Lord Boring Face’s keep. Got an arrow through my hand, dammit—think I don’t remember? What’s it matter, though? That piece of paper don’t mean daisies—show it to the press man, and he’ll piss on it afore he claps a pot on your head and whips you into ranks.”

Myreon frowned. There had been a day when her first instinct would have been to suggest going to the Defenders. Not now, though. Lyrelle Reldamar’s voice echoed in her memory: “The Balance is, and ever has been, the status quo.”

It couldn’t be true, though. Justice wasn’t a fiction. The Defenders didn’t have to be the enemy.

Which means you think they’re the enemy now? Myreon grimaced at herself. Was I part of the problem, or was I different? She liked to think that she had been. With the distance of time and . . . perspective, she supposed was the word . . . well, maybe not. Maybe instead of chasing a petty thief like Tyvian all over the West, she might have spent her energies doing something more useful.

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