Page 6 of Cage of Starlight
Tory’s eyes slip closed, but he forces them open. “Your contract?”
Hasra’s laughter rumbles through her chest and into his. “If she checks it, I’m in trouble. But did you see herface?”
“Mm, was it good?”
“The best.” Hasra whistles a slow tune as she walks. “Where to?”
He should sayget me out of here. He should leave Hulven tonight. Instead, so low Hasra shouldn’t be able to hear, he says, “Take me home.”
Maybe she hears it or maybe she knows he’s weak, and a fool to boot, because she does. By the time they reach Thatcher’s shop, Tory can’t stop shaking.
Thatcher darts to his feet when the door’s bell, made from twisted pieces of shrapnel, clatters their arrival. “Oh! I was wondering . . . he was late. I was about to go and look.”
Tory’s long wondered if they have some sort of alliance, an unspoken pact to make sure he doesn’t pass out in a gutter somewhere.
“Thatcher, love, it’s been too long! Still letting wily customers barter your work down to a fraction of its worth?”
Thatcher chokes on a noise that meansyes, because of course he is. He’s far too susceptible to sad stories. He took Tory in, after all.
Hasra chuckles. “I’d better put the kid to bed.”
“Ah, of course!”
She carries him up and tucks him under the covers, and Thatcher flutters around him, tapping a sweating pitcher. “Drink a little before you sleep, all right?”
Hasra waves him away. “Don’t worry, Alvorn. I’ve got it from here.”
Thatcher takes this as his cue to leave, but not before his fidgeting hands tuck the blanket tighter around Tory. For all that he earns his living mending broken things, he’s helpless with the human body, for which the best fix is oftenjust wait.
When the door creaks closed, Hasra lifts the pitcher, deadpan. “Little sips. No whining.”
He takes three. They don’t sit easy, but she’s right. Dehydration is kindling on this fire.
“You gonna be all right?”
He’ll sleep for a day, at least. That’ll leave two days before he has to go. Arlune, a country with no walls and no tattooed children in prisons, with sea-salt air flooding over fields fragrant with impossible harvests and stellite lanterns swinging from the eaves of dusky sand-glass buildings.
Arlune, with unfamiliar faces and an unfamiliar language. One more place to run to in a list as long as a lifetime.
Tory’s mouth sours. Running and running and running. Do people like him ever get tofight?
The thought settles in his chest and blooms there. Exhaustion drags him down, but he makes himself speak: “What if I don’t want to go?”
“No take-backs. Three days, Tory.”
“What about the rebels?”
Hasra sighs, but she’s the one who shared the story with him in the first place.They live in the woods off the fruit of the land,she told him when he was fifteen and angry and in need of a dream.They freed a whole unit of captured Seeds, once. They turned over a truck of supplies and picked it clean before Vantaras’ goons even noticed. People will say they don’t exist, but sometimes Belmin gets a call for help, and when he gets there, someone has already helped them.
They’re ridiculous stories. A child’s stories. For all he knows, Hasra made them up.
But if they’re out there, maybe he doesn’t have to run anymore. Maybe even someone like Tory can be allowed to fight for something.
“Sorry, they’ve been kinda quiet lately,” is all she says, and Tory’s stomach sinks. Cool fingers drift over his temple before vanishing. His door creaks as it opens. “Get some sleep.”
The next day passes in a haze—heat and darkness and a gentle arm behind his neck and Thatcher saying,one more sip. Thatcher makes beauty even of brutality. When he was a young man near the border, he gathered the shrapnel that washed up on shore. He used it to make the shop’s bell. It’s his fault, probably, that Tory started to believe Hulven was a place he could be happy.
The following morning, wobbling on his feet, Tory sets to convincing Thatcher to let him do the shopping. “Gotta earn my keep somehow.”
