Page 33 of Kill the Beast
“Not sticking out in a crowd also matters,” Lyssa told him. “As does ease of movement. Why don’t you at least pick a pair of pants that aren’t quite so… tight?”
“Oh ho! Ease of movement, you say? Look no further!” He did a lunge and, just like the pants he had been wearing before, the garish yellow monstrosities somehow didn’t rip.
She massaged her temples and sighed heavily, praying to the Lady for strength. Sheshouldbe out on the road by now, alone, heading toward her vengeance. Not babysitting a spendthrift with a coin purse bigger than his brain. “Will you at least get something in a darker color? Please?”
Alderic flashed her a smile. “Oh, all right. But only because you said please.”
When he vanished back into the dressing room, Nadia said, “Those pants really do hug the cheeks, don’t they?”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Lyssa snapped.
The little witch nudged her and nodded to the shopgirl, whowas fanning herself with one hand, her face as scarlet as the pants that had lured Alderic into the store. “Well, she did.”
Lyssa snorted.
Alderic came out again after a few minutes, this time all in black, from his plain silk cravat down to his miraculously practical shoes. The effect of the darker color against his pale skin and hair was striking, and brought out the stormy blue of his eyes.
“What do you think?” he asked.
Lyssa opened and closed her mouth, completely caught off guard by how not-ridiculous he looked.
He smirked, looking pleased with himself. “Ah. A good rule in fashion: buy whatever makes the lady speechless. What about you, little witch?”
Nadia cocked her head. “You look like a handsome crow.”
Alderic nodded. “That settles it. I’ll buy six in black,” he told the shopgirl, who looked about ready to faint.
“What’s next?” he asked as they shouldered their way through the street-traffic outside the shop, Lyssa using the bags she was carrying as a battering ram.
“You need a bedroll, a pack, and a pistol,” she said, and groaned at the way his face lit up; she had a feeling they were going to have to buy a second wagon to carry all of his purchases.
Lyssa and Alderic had time to kill while they waited for Nadia to do her own shopping, so they decided to get something to eat. They slurped down a cup of hot eels apiece, another cup each of chowder, and shared a folded newspaper cone full of fried cod. Alderic had wanted popcorn, too, but Lyssa refused to go near the stall. When she confessed—after much prodding on Alderic’s part—that the smell of it made her sick to her stomach, he had gotten a bag of saltwater taffy instead, commenting after Lyssa’s third handful thattheycertainly didn’t seem to make her ill, although that was liable to change if she kept it up.
Now they sat at a tiny table beside one of the many food stalls dotting the city streets, sipping coffee and nibbling on thin slices of bread topped with a scrape of butter. Coffee and “thins” had been Lyssa’s breakfast every morning when she lived on the streets with Eddie, and often her lunch and dinner, too, if she couldn’t earn enough for eels or sausage. She had gotten so sick of it as a child that she had sworn never to have coffee with buttered bread again once she could afford literally anything else, but of course now the meal reminded her of her brother, and she craved it all the time.
Pedestrians bustled past the stall; the air buzzed with the insect-drone of their chatter, mingled with the shouts of the street-sellers, the clop of hooves and squeak of wheels as the cabs and omnibuses went by, the discordant jangling of a hurdy-gurdy and not-much-better singing drifting lazily through the river of noise.
Alderic sat back in his chair, studying the crowd with an unreadable expression. He had worn one of the all-black outfits out of the store, his old clothes stuffed into one of the shopping bags. It was of resilient material and would travel well, the shopgirl had assured him—to Lyssa’s profound relief. At least he had a few sets of modest clothing for their journey, amidst all the other outrageous things he had purchased.
“You bought too much,” she said, nudging one of Alderic’s bulging paper shopping bags with her foot. It rankled her, the way he had spent a small fortune as easily as breathing.
“I can’t help it. I like things,” he replied.
“I noticed,” she said flatly.
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“You have that enormous manor, and not a single servant in sight. Yet you had ten clocks in the same room, and an entire wicker basket full of brass door knockers.”
“Yes. Well. Things last longer than people do,” he said, staring down into his coffee cup like his fortune was floating somewhere in the dregs.
Lyssa’s annoyance rapidly deflated at the sight of his expression—the sorrow and hopelessness and bitter longing that she knew all too well.
“Al,” she started, not knowing what to say, only that she wanted to shake that look loose, until it fell from his face. Ungharad’s sword, she almost asked him aboutfabric,but was saved from the confusing impulse by a wandering performer singing “Blood on Buxton Fields,” a distasteful ballad someone had written about the Beast. It was all poetry and heroism, glossing over the fact that most of the dead had been children. They had even made Lyssa’s brother into a gallant lover fighting off the monster to save his bride-to-be, instead of a gangly boy trying to protect his stupid little sister. It made her stomach turn every time she heard it.
“Boo! Play something else!” she shouted at the man, cupping her hands around her mouth so that her voice would carry over the noise of the street.
A few people turned to stare, and the street performer frowned at her. “It’s one of the most popular—”
