She nodded. She knew when to argue, now, and when to remain silent because argument was pointless. He gave her a corner of cheese; it tasted salty and pungent. The bread was dry as plain oats, and its coarse texture made her thirsty. He divided the rest of the food into two portions and gave half to her. Both carried leather pouches, tied to their belts, for such gleanings as this. Such necessities the ruined city provided in plenty, taken from empty houses and shops or—if valuable enough—pried from the dead. Water, clothing, knives or spoons or even an entire timbered house furnished with fine painted furniture and good linen, none of this they lacked; only food and safety.
They waited until no crack of light gleamed through the plank walls onto the warped floorboards, until gray shadow became indistinguishable from black. Then Matthias eased open the trap and slid over the edge as quietly as he could.
“Lady!”
A man, not Matthias, spoke. Anna froze. Matthias grunted and dropped to the ground.
“There now,” said the man, “don’t pull your knife on me. I won’t hurt you. Lady Above, I didn’t think any soul had survived in this charnel house. You’re just a child.”
“Old enough to be apprenticed,” muttered Matthias, stung, as he always was, because this man’s voice was like their uncle’s and his taunt the same one. Only perhaps, Anna thought, this man had spoken with awed pity, not with contempt, when he called Matthias a child. She had a sudden rash intuition that this man could be trusted, unlike their uncle, and anyway, if Matthias was now caught, it was better to die with him than to struggle on in a fight she could never win alone. She swung her legs out and climbed quickly and quietly down the ladder.
Matthias swore at her under his breath. The man gasped aloud, then clapped a hand over his mouth and stared furtively around, but they remained alone. No one moved through the tanning grounds this late. The quarter moon lit them, and thin ghostly shadows cut the pits with strange patterns. Anna grabbed her brother’s hand and held on tightly.
“Ai, Lady, and a younger one still,” the man said at last. “I thought you was a cat. Are there more of you?”
“Only us two,” said Matthias.
“Lord in Heaven. How did you survive?”
Matthias gestured toward the pits, then realized the man might not be able to see his movement. “There was food enough to be scrounged, until now. We hid here because the dogs couldn’t smell us.”
The man squinted at Anna in the dim light, stepped forward abruptly, and took her chin in his hand. Matthias started forward, raising his belt knife, but Anna said, “No,” and he stopped and waited.
After a moment the man let go and stepped back, brushing his eyes with a finger. “A girl. You’re a girl, and no older than my little Mariya. The Lady is merciful, to have saved one.”
“Where is your daughter?” asked Anna, bold now. This man did not scare her.
“Dead,” he said curtly. “In the Eika raid that took my village not a month ago. They killed everyone.”
“They didn’t kill you,” said Anna reasonably, seeing that he looked alive and not anything like the shade of a dead man—not that she had ever seen such a thing, but certainly she had heard stories of them such as come back to haunt the living world on Hallowing Eve.
“Ai, they killed me, child,” he said bitterly. “Killed all but this husk. Now I am merely a soulless body, their slave, to do with as they will until they tire of me and feed me to the dogs.” Though he spoke as though living exhausted him, still he shuddered when he spoke of the dogs.
Anna sorted through this explanation and thought she understood most of it. “What will you do with us?” she asked. “Won’t the Eika kill us if they find us?”
“They will,” said the man. “They never leave children alive. They only want grown slaves strong enough to do their work. But I heard tell from one of the other slaves that there are no children in Gent, no bodies of children, simply no children at all. It’s a tale they whisper at night, in the darkness, that the saint who guards the city led the children away to safety or up to the Chamber of Light, I don’t know which.”
“It’s true,” muttered Matthias. “All the children are gone, but I don’t know where they went.”
“Where are your parents, then?” asked the man. “Why were you not taken to safety, if the others were?”
Anna shrugged, but she saw her brother hunch down as he always did, because the misery still sank its claws in him although she did not recall their parents well enough to mourn them.
“They’re dead four summers ago,” said Matthias. “Our da drowned when he was out fishing, and our ma died a few months later of a fever. They were good people. Then we went to our uncle. He ran, when the Eika came. He never thought of us. I ran back to the house and got Anna, but by then there was fighting everywhere. You couldn’t even get to the cathedral where most folk fled, so we hid in here. And here we stayed.”
“It’s a miracle,” murmured the man. Out of the night’s silence came sudden noise: dogs barking and a single harsh call, a word neither child understood. The man started noticeably. “They come ’round in the middle night to count us,” he said. “I must go back. I won’t betray you, I swear it on Our Lady’s Hearth. May Our Lord strike me down with His heavenly Sword if I do any such thing. I’ll bring more food tomorrow, if I can.”
o;Lady!”
A man, not Matthias, spoke. Anna froze. Matthias grunted and dropped to the ground.
“There now,” said the man, “don’t pull your knife on me. I won’t hurt you. Lady Above, I didn’t think any soul had survived in this charnel house. You’re just a child.”
“Old enough to be apprenticed,” muttered Matthias, stung, as he always was, because this man’s voice was like their uncle’s and his taunt the same one. Only perhaps, Anna thought, this man had spoken with awed pity, not with contempt, when he called Matthias a child. She had a sudden rash intuition that this man could be trusted, unlike their uncle, and anyway, if Matthias was now caught, it was better to die with him than to struggle on in a fight she could never win alone. She swung her legs out and climbed quickly and quietly down the ladder.
Matthias swore at her under his breath. The man gasped aloud, then clapped a hand over his mouth and stared furtively around, but they remained alone. No one moved through the tanning grounds this late. The quarter moon lit them, and thin ghostly shadows cut the pits with strange patterns. Anna grabbed her brother’s hand and held on tightly.
“Ai, Lady, and a younger one still,” the man said at last. “I thought you was a cat. Are there more of you?”