Nobody's Goddess (Never Veil #1)(70)

Those women couldn’t care less if you starved. I knew it. What I once wouldn’t have given for the problem of the lord to resolve itself without me. For him to suddenly vanish, for me to not know it was my fault.

I stood, fighting the weakness in my legs, and grabbed the nearest empty bucket. Without responding to any of the anguished cries, I headed toward the well at the center of the village, not caring if I drew everyone’s notice as I dragged my feet through the crowd I knew I’d find there.

I drew no one’s attention. And there was no crowd in the market.

Merchants’ stalls were threadbare or empty. There was only a quarter of the amount of produce I expected to find and almost none of the cheese or fabric. The little things that no one needed, even if they were lovely, the gifts that men often bought their goddesses, were gone entirely. The rotting produce that would normally have gone to the commune was for sale at discounted prices, and it was only those cheaper items that the few villagers with baskets were buying.

“Come now,” said one merchant. “Don’t you have a young boy and girl at home? Don’t you want to feed them the best? Look at the color on this tomato!”

A woman who seemed vaguely familiar grimaced and rifled through her basket for a single copper. “No. These.” There was a pile of wilted vegetables in front of her, and she shoved them eagerly into her basket after the man accepted her coin, sighing as he tucked it into a pouch at his waist.

“I suppose no one can afford to pay for your husband’s music no more.” The man put his perfect tomato down gently with both hands in front of a sign that read, “High Quality Produce. Among the Last. 3 Coppers Each.” He scratched his chin. “Why is that, you think? What went wrong? Seems just a few weeks ago, the farmers had more food for us than we knew what to do with.”

The woman tucked a wilted head of lettuce on top of her basket. “I don’t know.” Her lips pinched into a thin line. “Maybe you merchants pay them too little for their crops because you charge too much and no one’s buying. Now they don’t have enough copper to feed themselves anything but what they manage to hoard from the rest of us.”

The merchant yawned and stretched a hand over his head. “But the prices aren’t so different, are they? I know we charged more than this for quality goods just a short time ago. And we had no need to sell this wilted trash.”

I didn’t think the woman cared. “Good day,” she said, curtly. She met my eyes as she passed and looked at me from top to bottom, but she said nothing. I realized my bedraggled appearance wasn’t as out of place as I expected. The woman’s dress was coated in white dust, and I wondered what a musician’s wife was doing to get that way, and who was watching those children the merchant mentioned if she worked.

“No one has enough copper.” The merchant stared overhead, not paying me any mind. “How could so much copper just vanish into thin air? Goddess help us.” He kept muttering to himself and I pushed forward down the path, my eyes widening as I took in the line in front of the well.

They were all tired. No one was quite as tired or hopeless as the men in the commune, but there was something different in the air. Men still had their arms around women, and women still laid their heads against their men’s broad shoulders. But there were fewer smiles and less laughter.

“Thank the goddess water is always free,” said the woman in front of me to her man.

“Yes, darling.” He kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault the payments at the quarry have decreased.” The woman bit her lip and traced a finger over the man’s chest. “How can the foreman forget where he got the copper to pay everyone from when people weren’t buying stone for building materials? How does he expect to replenish it with more copper if he can’t pay the men enough to dig it up?”

“We’ll find more.” The man took the woman’s hand in his. “We all have our goddesses to take care of. So many of the men have children—”

“Thank the goddess we haven’t yet had any.” The woman smiled, but just barely. She didn’t seem thankful at all. “I don’t mean … Don’t get it into your head that I don’t want any. Because I do. It’s just … ” Her voice quieted as she played with her man’s shirt. “I’d hate for them to be so hungry now, along with us. Someday it’ll get better. We can welcome them then.”

Someday it’ll get better. It won’t.

The bucket fell out of my hands and clattered to the ground. The coupling in front of me tore their gazes from each other just long enough to glower at me, but I didn’t care. I crouched beside the bucket and hugged my knees to my chest.

They don’t remember the lord. They don’t realize it was him who kept this village running. I didn’t even realize it was him, really. How could I? He never even came down to the village. He never spoke with the people directly. How could I have known he helped so many?

How could I have known what I was doing, when I yearned for my own freedom?

“Hey. Hey. Do you want some water or don’t you?” The woman behind me kicked at my back lightly.

I saw the line that had formed behind me and realized I was some distance from the well and it was my turn. I didn’t know how long I must have been lost in my thoughts. “Yes,” I said, quietly, thinking of the men in the commune.