Read Online Blood Ties by Pamela Freeman - Free Book Online Page B

through. It rose in layers of brown and white and gold.
    “There’s no green,” Ash had said, feeling stupid. How could there be no green? The whole world was green, except in the snow country.
    His mother sniffed. “Turviters think trees suck up the goodness from the air.”
    “It looks like a layer cake,” Ash said, awestruck, and was thinking, Sweet. Rich. Delicious.
    “Like old stale cake,” his mother said. “And full of maggots and weevils.”
    A group of women in bright shawls and dresses without trousers underneath had walked past, laughing loudly.
    “A few butterflies and ladybirds around, too,” his father said drily.
    “Where you get sailors you get butterflies,” his mother retorted, then her face softened and they both laughed.
    For years afterward Ash had looked for butterflies near any harbor they went to, but he had discovered they were few and far between.
    Ash put the memory away from him and kept running. He rounded the Customshouse near the docks and began to climb the hill, past the swaying ghost of the drunk bosun’s mate loitering on the steps where he’d broken his neck, and past darkened taverns and brothels where only a single torch hung outside. The whores were asleep. Even the Sailor’s Rest, which never closed, had its door shut against the early morning chill.
    He wanted to slacken off, to slow down as he breasted the hill, but he forced himself on, muttering the chorus once again. His feet slapped the cobbles a little faster. There was a drunk asleep in front of the Watering Hole. Probably asleep. Perhaps dead.
    The girl’s face leaped to his mind: young, she had been, fourteen maybe, with pale hair and quick hands. She’d have had him, if he’d been the sozzled young merchant she’d taken him for. She’d have slit him from balls to throat and smiled while she was doing it.
    But after she died —
after he’d killed her
— her face had been washed clean of all the greed and hatred. She had lain like a child fallen asleep, waiting for her parents to come home.
    Ash threw up in the road. Bile burned his throat. He stayed for a moment, bent over with his hands on his knees, panting. He forced down the memories of the girl, of the smell of her blood, the heat of her body against his hand as he slammed her against the wall, the soft sigh as her last breath escaped her. He pushed them all back down and his gorge with them. Then he straightened up and began to run again. Doronit was waiting.
    His memory flashed back three months to the first time he had seen her. It was early in the morning. The day before had been very long, very dispiriting. No matter where they went, no one had been interested in employing a Traveler boy with no skills and no references. Most tradesmen and merchants had refused to even see him, and those who had were scathing. “Wouldn’t sleep safe in my bed with one of you lot in the house!” said the butcher, who had been their last hope. Ash hadn’t been sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. He had dreaded the charnel house and the dismembering, the constant stench of blood. But at least, he had thought, butchers ate well.
    They had gone back to their lodgings and sat slumped at the table. Even his mother had been diminished by a full day of hatred and distrust.
    “Perhaps we could find a Traveler to take you on. A tinker or farrier, or someone like that,” his father had said.
    “No,” his mother said. “There’s one more person left to try. Tomorrow.”
    “Who?” Ash asked.
    “Her name is Doronit. She’s settled. She hires out safe-guarders.”
    “Swallow!” his father protested.
    “I know it can be dangerous. But it’s a trade that will never go short of work. And it is . . . respectable.”
    His father fell silent, passing his hand over his head in tiredness or uncertainty.
    “I don’t mind,” Ash said. “There’ve been times I would have liked to know how to fight.”
    His mother nodded. “That’s true. There’s always