‘They used to bring food into town and give it away to the poor,’ Jinia said. ‘But only once or twice a year. The years they didn’t, everyone hated them. But it was just bad harvests. When they only had enough to feed themselves. Still, everyone hated them.’
They passed beneath the arch and strode into the littered compound, and were halted by the sight of all the snow-covered corpses.
Jinia pulled sideways at his hand, stretching out his arm.
But all the pain he’d been fighting against inside was suddenly too much, and blood had leaked out from his sword-wound, and once it leaked out, the battle was over. Darkness took him, and he sank into it, although in the instant before he knew nothing, he heard Jinia cry out as his hand tugged loose from her grasp.
When he next opened his eyes, the ground under his back was wet where the snow had melted. Jinia was kneeling beside him, and she had taken off her blanket and draped it over him, and he saw tears on her cheeks. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her.
‘You fainted. There was blood. I thought – I thought you died!’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t. It was just that the wound remembered the sword.’
‘You should never have helped me.’
‘I can’t help helping you,’ he said, pushing the brokenness back inside and sitting up.
She wiped at her cheeks. ‘I thought I was alone. All over again. Wreneck, I can’t do this with you. I lost everything and I have nothing and it has to stay that way.’
He watched her stand, watched her brush the crusted snow from her bared, bony knees, revealing cracked red skin and scabs. ‘You can’t make me hope,’ she said. ‘It’s not fair.’
‘You’re leaving me?’
‘I told you! I can’t stay with you!’
‘Don’t die in that alley, Jinia.’
‘Stop crying. I won’t. I’ll survive. I’m like you. They can’t kill us. I get food left for me. Not every grown-up is bad, Wreneck. Don’t think that, or you will be a very lonely man.’ She looked around. ‘There’re cloaks I can find here, maybe even real blankets – horse-blankets, maybe. There’re some sheds that didn’t burn. I’ll search in those and find something. I won’t freeze to death.’
‘You promise?’
‘I promise, Wreneck. Now, when you go back home, go round the town. Don’t go down the main street. Some people there are mad at you, for what you said. It’s a longer walk, but go across the fields. Say you’ll do that. Say it.’
He wiped at his eyes and nose. ‘I’ll cross the fields.’
‘And don’t tell your mother about any of this.’
‘I won’t. But I won’t be there long anyway.’
‘Stay with her, Wreneck. If you leave, you’ll break her heart.’
‘I’ll make it better.’
‘Good. That’s good.’ She nodded towards the gateway. ‘Go on, then.’
The sadness in him was a worse pain than any other he’d ever felt, but he stood up. The cold bit at his wet shirt against his back. ‘Goodbye, Jinia.’
‘Goodbye, Wreneck.’
Then, remembering his regrets after he saw Orfantal off, he lunged to her and hugged her tight, and all the pain he felt when he did that, from the sword-wound, from everything else, seemed right.
She seemed to shrink in his arms, and then she was pushing him away, taking hold of his shoulders to turn him round and then giving him a little push.
He walked through the gateway.
Wreneck would cross the fields, as he had promised. But he wasn’t going home. He was going off to make things right, because even in this world some things just had to be made right. His ma would still be there when he finally went home, after he’d done everything he needed to do. He could fix things with her then.
But now, he would wait for dusk, hidden from sight, and then go and collect the spear he had buried under the snow near the old stone trough.