The Continent (The Continent #1)(51)
An image of his shadowed figure at the Topi camp comes to my mind: the effortless sweep of his knife across my attacker’s throat, the blood, shining black in the near darkness, the sharp scent of iron in the air.
He saved me. To think of him now, composed, at ease, seemingly no different than any other villager—it is hard to believe what he has done. What he does. I recall Aaden’s words: We’ve traded our swords for treaties, our daggers for promises—but our thirst for violence has never been quelled. And that’s the crux of it: it can’t be quelled. It’s human nature.
Is it?
I brush the thought aside, disconcerted, and turn onto the little lane leading to my cottage. At the sight of my front porch, happiness becomes too small a word. I’m in such a hurry to get inside that I almost miss it—a small paper bundle on the porch. I pick it up; it’s oblong, and heavy, like a skipping stone.
I peel away the paper to find a bar of lilac soap, its glorious scent strong and powerful even through my haze of manure. I remember Noro at the marketplace, talking about such luxury items: Waste of oka if you ask me.
Noro! I clutch the soap to my heart. It is the single greatest gift I have ever received.
CHAPTER 17
A KNOCK AT THE FRONT DOOR AWAKENS ME ON the morning after my first full week of work. I open one eye. Dim morning light slices through the edges of the window drapery, casting stark white lines on the floor. No. I let my eye close.
Another knock comes, louder this time. This time, both eyes snap open. I flip my blankets to one side, swing myself out of bed, and hurry along the hallway to the door.
“Who’s there?” I say.
A muffled voice filters through the door. “It’s Yuki Sanzo, come to call.”
I rub the sleep from my eyes, try to shake off my drowsiness, and open the door.
There she stands, looking immaculate (and wide-awake) in an ensemble very much like mine: a long tunic with a fitted neck, split at the collar by a narrow notch, and dark trousers of heavy spun cotton. The tunic—cinched at the hips by a braided black belt—falls almost to mid-thigh; tapered, close-fitting sleeves are so long that they reach clear to the fingertips. My garments are of deep green, while Yuki’s are pale blue, which is striking against the inky blackness of her hair.
“I…how did you find my house?”
“I am long acquainted with Noro Zensuke—I mentioned our meeting when I saw him last, and he suggested that you might need a bit of help.” She looks past me to the sitting room, which is admittedly in a bit of disarray, with soiled clothes on the floor in the corner and the dustbin overflowing at the door to the kitchen. And perhaps a small pile of additional garbage that I wasn’t quite sure where to put.
My face flushes red. “Well…I’ve never really…you see, in the Spire, my family had servants who would tend to the more…menial…tasks. I mean—what I mean to say is—” She has both brows raised and the smallest of smiles on her face. I take a deep breath. “Honestly, Yuki, I have no idea how to manage just about anything in this house.”
She nods. “Can you cook?”
“No.”
“What have you been eating?”
“Mostly bread and cheese.”
“No meat?”
“I wasn’t sure how to…the chickens at the market are alive.”
She laughs, deeply. “Vaela Sun. I would think you hopeless if only you were not so earnest. Come along, let me in. I will teach you.” As she steps inside, she crinkles her nose. “By the stars. Why does it smell like manure in here?”
Thus begins my training in all things domestic. If there is one thing to be learned, it is this: a job, no matter how nauseating, is an easy thing to manage. You wake up, you go to work, you return home. Easy. Keeping one’s own house, however, requires far more effort and responsibility than I could ever have imagined. Not only must one perform the general maintenance and cleaning, which is more complicated than I thought it would be, but daily chores must be managed as well: cooking, tending a vegetable garden, washing and mending clothes, seeing to the dishes—and my least favorite, emptying and cleaning the chamber pot.
Yuki must have thought me hopeless during the first few days of her instruction, as I learned to scrub and sew and cook the most basic of meals. But her patience is eventually rewarded: by the end of the week, I am able to clean the cottage from top to bottom, bake a loaf of bread (dense and chewy, but bread nonetheless), and mend a torn garment (a particularly nice red tunic that was caught on the fence of the cattle pen). And laundry! I can now wash the stink from my clothes and present myself as a human rather than a crumpled, pathetic outworlder.
And so I work and clean, and then, in the hours before bed, I turn my attention to the map. It is a lovely thing, now that I’ve practiced with the quill and have learned not to dribble ink all over the paper. I am alive when I work on the map—it is as though I am connected to something greater than myself. I feel the presence of my parents, I smell the dusty scent of the old books in the Chancellery library, I hear the smooth whir of the trains as they glide over Astor. The map takes me home, where I long to be—where I yet hope to be, when the “anger of the sea” passes and I can be returned to Ivanel. In my heart, I dream that this chart will be a valuable thing for the Aven’ei—that perhaps lives might be saved by it. But for now, I keep it a secret, my secret, my wonderful, intoxicating escape. And when I grow tired, when my eyes are nearly closing with fatigue, I roll it up and tuck it behind the log bin in the sitting room. My perfect, happy little secret.