Fall of Light (The Kharkanas Trilogy 2)

Pausing, he looked into the narrow alley beside the tavern, thinking to see the one-armed man who had been Orfantal’s mother’s secret friend, since the alley was where the man lived. But he wasn’t at his usual place on the steps to the cellar. Then he caught a faint motion deeper in the alley’s shadows, something small and huddled, trying to keep warm beneath a thin blanket.

Wreneck headed over, stepping quietly, as if sneaking up on a nesting bird. He couldn’t remember the man’s name, so he said nothing.

When the figure started and looked up, Wreneck halted. He saw, shining out from a grimy face, eyes that he knew well.

‘Jinia?’

At the name the girl shrank back, pushing up against the stone wall and turning her face away. Her bare feet pushed out from under the thin blanket, and their soles were black and cracked.

‘But why didn’t you go to your family? Ma said you did. She said you went off in the night, when I was asleep. When I was still getting better.’

She said nothing.

‘Jinia?’ Wreneck edged closer. ‘You need to come back home with me.’

Finally, she spoke, her voice thin and sounding tired. ‘She didn’t want me.’

‘Who?’

Still she kept herself turned away, her face hidden. ‘Your mother, Wreneck. Listen. You’re a fool. Go away. Leave me alone.’

‘Why didn’t she want you? I saved you!’

‘Oh, Wreneck, you don’t know anything.’

Confused, he looked around, but no one was in sight. The people in front of the tavern had not come to help, or even look. He didn’t understand grown-ups at all.

‘I’m broken inside,’ she said, in a dull voice. ‘I won’t have babies. Everything down there will hurt, always. This is my last winter, Wreneck, and it’s how I want it. There’s no point. No point to any of this.’

‘But,’ said Wreneck, ‘I’m broken inside, too.’

She was so quiet he thought she hadn’t heard him, and then she sobbed.

He went to her. Knelt at her side and put a hand on her shoulder. She smelled bad. She smelled like what the old men had begun distilling in their sheds, and only now did Wreneck see the rotting heap of potato skins nearby, that she had been eating. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to die. If you did you wouldn’t be eating that. And you wouldn’t be trying to stay warm. I love you, Jinia. And that brokenness. That hurt. It’s just what lives inside. That’s all it is. On the outside, you’re always the same. That’s what we’ll give each other – everything that’s on the outside, do you see?’

She wiped at her face and then looked up at him, the eye that wasn’t wandering meeting his gaze. ‘That’s not how it is, Wreneck. That’s not love at all. You’re too young. You don’t understand.’

‘That’s not true. I’m eleven now. I’ve made a spear, and I’m going to hunt them down and I’m going to kill them. Telra and Farab and Pryll. I’m going to stick my spear in them until they’re dead. And you’re going to watch me do it.’

‘Wreneck—’

‘Come with me. Let’s go explore the monastery.’

‘I’m too drunk to walk.’

‘It’s just what you’ve been eating.’

‘It kills the pain.’

‘So you can walk and it won’t hurt.’ He reached down and helped her stand. ‘I’m going to take care of you,’ he said. ‘From now on.’

‘Your mother—’

‘And after the monastery, we’re going away. I told you. We’re going hunting, for the people who did that to you.’

‘You’ll never find them.’

‘I will.’