Brightly Woven(22)

“Your arm—is it hurt?”

This time he nodded, and when he spoke, his voice was scarcely above a whisper. “I got kicked by a rottin’ horse and dropped the bags. Mrs. Forthright’ll slaughter me for messin’ up her deliveries.”

“Mrs. Forthright?” I repeated. I tried to salvage as much sand as I could into the bags that weren’t badly torn. They were all labeled with the glassmaker shop names. “We’ll have to talk to her about that then, won’t we? I was just going to see her myself.”

“Why would you want to do that?” the boy whispered. A few minutes later, when I handed the near-empty bags to the middle-aged woman, I understood why.

“And what is this?” she demanded. The boy cowered behind me. “I give you a simple task—”

“He’s hurt his arm,” I cut in. “I don’t think he’ll be able to deliver the sandbags today.”

“And what a little genius you are,” the woman practically snarled. Her fingers raked her dark hair out of her eyes. “What in the seven sodding hells are you doing here?”

I handed her Mrs. Pemberly’s parcel and note and watched her sneer of anger turn to appraisal.

“So you’re looking for work, then?” she asked. “Off home with you, Geoff! I’ll be speaking to your mother tonight about this!”

The boy turned and ran as though the four winds were at his heels, leaving me the sole victim of scrutiny.

“I’ll work the entire day for you,” I said. “For a hundred pieces.”

The woman let out a strangled laugh. “Do you have any idea how much that is?”

“I’ll do every delivery, and I’ll do them quickly, without a single complaint,” I swore.

“Little girl, I make that much in a month!” she said. “You’ll do all that for ten pieces.”

“Sixty,” I said. I was in the position to bargain. The city relied on glass to stay alive, and no glassmaker could make his creations without the sand.

“I can find another boy just as easily for twenty.”

“And I can go faster and take more at once for fifty.”

“With those weak arms? You’ll be lucky to get four deliveries done. Twenty-five.”

“Forty, and I’ll mend the poor excuses for curtains you have in your store window and that dress you’re wearing.”

Mrs. Forthright caught her tongue at my final offer, glancing down at the frayed hem of her old dress. I gave her a hard look, already frustrated by how little I would make from such hard work.

“Forty,” she agreed at last. “But if you drop a speck of sand on the way to any of the deliveries, you’ll be gone without a single piece. And don’t think I’ll give you directions—you are here to make my life easier.”

I fought to hide my smile. “Where would you like me to go first?”

The task was simple enough, but it didn’t make carrying the bags any easier. I had helped Henry load his father’s wagon with mud barrels hundreds of times, yet the distance we had been forced to walk with each bushel had been minimal. Fairwell’s strange streets seemed to constantly double back on one another, and for the first time in my life, my sense of direction abandoned me. I wandered helplessly from one street to the next, relying on chance to find the shops I needed.

I had wanted to love Fairwell so badly, to take in everything it had to offer. Now I was ready to smash in the glass signs and sculptures outside each shop. When the sun reached its highest point in the sky, not even the rainbow of light they created could put the smile back on my face. Finally, after I passed the same glass shop half a dozen times, a little woman with an enormous grin stuck her head out her door to ask if I was lost.

I handed her the delivery slip on which Mrs. Forthright had hastily scribbled the address.

“You’re nearly there,” she said. “Two streets over—you’ll have quite a battle trying to get through the crowds, I’m afraid.”

“Why?” I asked, shifting the bag’s weight on my shoulder. “Did something happen?”

“The men are leaving for the capital,” the woman said. “They were summoned last night to prepare Provincia’s defense. Just manual labor, of course, but the Wizard Guard needs the able bodies to do it for them.”

“What about Fairwell’s defense?” I asked.

The woman gave me a sad smile and patted my arm. “Exactly, my dear, exactly. What do they care so long as they’re safe in their castle? In the past, we’ve suffered through years of fighting and destruction, but none of our calls for help were ever answered. There’s a crime in that, you know, a real tragedy. I don’t think any of our men should go.”

But they did, by the hundreds. I found the large street not by her directions, but by the sound of smashing glass and humming voices. I abandoned the bag on my shoulder in front of the nearest shop and pressed my way through the crowds to the very front.

The children in front of me threw flowers, and petals showered down from above, but there was no way I could tear my eyes away from the broken glass in the road. Every now and then, a glassblower would present one of his or her creations, bending down to place it on the road. The men, dressed in everything from dress coats to torn trousers, smashed the figurines to pieces beneath their boots.