Read Online The Wicked and the Just by J. Anderson Coats - Free Book Online Page A

stones.”
    I look down at my clean blue hem. My vellet hem. My mother’s hem.
    I am sweatier than a pig in Purgatory.
    For all that the privileges of Caernarvon are costing me, they’d best pay off to the hilt.
    Â 
    It’s hotter than perdition. I have been walking forever. If I were a saint, I’d be a martyr by now. Saint Cecily, scorched to death on a forced march.
    I trudge behind my father, step after miserable step. My slippers are ruined beyond salvage, so I labor to keep my hem off the ground. There is less mud out here, but the vellet across my arm feels like a cartload of masonry bricks.
    We seem to be walking a circuit around the town walls. We keep passing these bits of quarry-stone poking out of the ground like teeth in an old man’s head.
    By all that’s holy, why must this town be so large?
    Someone falls into step at my side. A wineskin appears before me, hovering like some strange trick of a heat-addled mind.
    If it is a trick of my mind, it’s one that pleases me. He’s got hair like a blackbird’s wing and a careless smile and the most charming dimple.
    My hands are shaking, but I take the wineskin and raise it to my lips. No wine comes out. He laughs and uncorks the bung, then offers it again.
    If God Almighty had any mercy at all, He’d let me melt through the desolate wasteland below my feet ere making me face this comely stranger before whom I’ve just made a fool of myself.
    â€œThirsty work, this,” he says, “and you seem thirstier than most. Would I had something for you to ride.”
    The wine is bitter and warm, but I drink it so I’ll not have to look at him, or speak. Then I hand the wineskin quickly back.
    My father has noticed my new companion and drops back to take my elbow, which he holds much too tightly. “Edward Mercer. A health to you.”
    â€œOh, come now,” my wine-saint replies. “You must call me Ned if we’re to be neighbors.”
    He says it to my father, but he looks right at me.
    My father snorts so quietly that I’m certain he’s merely clearing dust from his throat.
    My wine-saint is still smiling at me. My father would flay me alive should I call a man I’m not wed to by his Christian name, but my father would also not want me to be ill-mannered.
    So I smile at the mercer. At Ned.
    â€œAnd welcome to the privileges, Edgeley. How does it feel to be a friend of the king?”
    My father worms his way between Ned and me. My elbow is fiery where the vellet scratches.
    â€œIt’ll feel better when those privileges begin to take effect. I put down quite a sum on murage just getting my household through the gate.”
    â€œWell, you’re free of those tolls now. The king does not wish to burden his friends here with such bothersome details. We’ll let the Welsh maintain the walls and roads, right?”
    â€œSo there is actually some advantage to being here?” I ask, partly because I’m interested but mostly because Ned will have an excuse to speak to me directly. “It’s not just where all the castoffs and vagabonds end up?”
    Ned winks at me and my father’s hand on my elbow tightens enough to burn. “Why, demoiselle, you couldn’t drag me back to York, God’s honest truth! I can charge their lot what I like and they must pay, for they’re not permitted to trade outside the Caernarvon market. Not even an egg can pass from one neighbor to another without the both of them being dragged into borough court and amerced.”
    Saints, but Ned has a shivery smile. I cannot look upon him without feeling all hot and sloshy.
    â€œThe sheriff of Caernarvon cannot even peek beneath the canvas on any of my loads, and all it costs me is keeping this place safe, which I’d do anyway;” Ned half draws a short sword at his belt and adds, “There isn’t the Welshman born who’d dare touch me.”
    My father shifts enough