She rolled over at the sound, and he tensed. He didn’t want to wake her. She needed her rest, and he didn’t know if she’d been sleeping that well lately.
He pulled a fistful of coins from his pocket and stacked them on the table next to her bed, where she’d find them when she awoke. It was where he left them each time he came to visit. Finn didn’t know how she spent them, or whether she was the one to do so, but the coins always disappeared, so he made a point of bringing more each time he came. This time, he left the sculpture he’d taken as well. He couldn’t move that without Oscar realizing what he’d done, so it was better to just leave it here for now.
Back in the entryway, he started to head back out before hesitating. There wasn’t any real urgency to leaving. His mother rested, and he didn’t have to get to the tavern until later. He could take a few moments and truly make sure his mother had what she needed. Lena should be taking care of her, but what if she used the coin on herself?
The thought of that made him smile.
Not Lena.
She might live in this bleak part of the city, but there had always been something so dignified about his sister. It was almost as if she were there because she chose to be, not because she had no other choice.
The small kitchen was a mess.
The lantern there had been dimmed to barely more than a glowing ember, and he brightened it, pushing back the darkness. The musty odor that he’d noticed seemed to come from there. Dishes were piled in the washbasin, some with food still caked on them. A loaf of bread rested on one of the counters, barely touched. He squeezed it, finding the bread too hard. He pulled open the cupboards. Potatoes and some carrots but no other food.
What was my sister doing?
This wasn’t like her.
Not only wasn’t it like her to have so little food around, but it wasn’t like her to leave the dishes a mess in this way.
If there had been trouble, Helda would have said something to him.
Finn pulled the dishes from the basin and stacked them on the counter. He carried the basin out the back of the house to the small pump shared by everyone along the street and worked at the smooth wooden handle until water poured out of the spigot, filling the basin. When he was done, he carried it back into the house.
This wasn’t how he envisioned spending his afternoon, but it had to be done.
Tossing some wood into the oven, he used a flint to get the wood lit and glowing, coaxing the fire until it burned brightly. When it did, he placed the basin of water on the stovetop to heat it.
“I didn’t expect to see you here. Nor did I expect to find you cleaning the dishes.”
Finn turned to see his sister standing in the doorway. Her blue eyes were drawn and weary. She tucked her auburn hair behind her ears.
“It looked as if it needed to be done,” he said.
He picked up the bar of soap from the counter and set it into the basin, stirring it around until suds formed.
“I was going to get to it.”
“I’m sure you were.” Finn set the soap down, dropping it onto the counter before turning to his sister. “Where have you been, anyway?”
She shot him a stern look. “You’ve been gone for the last week, and you come in and ask where I’ve been?”
Had it been a week?
He was usually better about stopping by, but perhaps he’d been distracted with the job. “Shouldn’t I?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I left some money for supplies.”
His sister pulled a faded leather sack off her shoulder and set it on the small table near the back wall. “You don’t have to leave any money for us. I’d rather not take your tainted coin, anyway.”
“Come on, Lena. It’s not tainted.”
“I’m taking care of Mother. We don’t need you putting us at risk.”
“I’m not putting you at risk.”
She started to pull a few items from the sack and set them on the table. Most were food. One was a small vial with a dark powder inside. “You are if we come to depend on you and your contribution to the family.” Lena pushed past him and headed to the cabinet where he’d found the potatoes and carrots. She set some of the food inside and closed it before turning to him. “You haven’t said why you came by today.”
“You haven’t said where you’ve been.”
Not that Finn expected her to share too much with him. With everything he did trying to serve the crew, he hadn’t been around. He didn’t know what his sister was doing. Much like she didn’t really know what he had been doing, which he preferred.
Lena let out a heavy sigh, her shoulders slumping. “I was working.”
He started to laugh, but the irritated gleam in his sister’s eyes cut him off. “Where?”
“Master Jorven took me in.”
“Jorven? But he’s the—”
“Butcher. I know what he is. And it took some convincing on my part to even get the job.”
“You can’t even stand…” Finn shook his head, deciding against saying what had first come to mind. Besides, she had a job, and he knew jobs anywhere could be hard to come by, even in Brinder. He just hadn’t expected she’d need to work with the butcher. “What did you have to do for him?”
She pulled a chair out and sank down into it. Finn realized just how tired she was.
It reminded him of how tired their mother had looked in the year after their father had been put away. She’d taken on any and all work she could to keep food on the table, but even that hadn’t been enough. That was why Finn had started taking jobs. Small ones at first, but more and more had been necessary for him to get the coin needed to provide for his family, especially as the jobs his mother was able to do began to diminish as she started to grow increasingly tired. It wasn’t until later that they realized just how sick she’d gotten.
“Why don’t you just take the coin I’ve brought? It’s more than enough to keep you fed.”
“I’m sure it is. What happens when the Archers come and demand to know where we’ve gotten it? What happens when the coins you bring to us are marked in some way they can trace them back to what you’ve done?”
“That’s not how it works.”
She sighed again, shaking her head. “I don’t know how it works anymore. All I know is that you’re not here.” She rested her elbow on the table, and he thought she might fall asleep. “You could have taken that apprenticeship offered to you. Mother had it all lined up.”
“I’m sure I could manage to learn what I need to be a knacker without an apprenticeship.”
“You wouldn’t have the guild support if you did.”
Finn hated the guilds. They were nearly as bad as the high-class merchants who sought to buy favor throughout the city, only they did it more discreetly. Control one means of progress toward an honorable profession—even those as questionably honorable as the knackers that cleaned out the strays in the city—and they thought they should control everything.
“You can still spend the money I’ve brought,” he said. She shook her head. “Why not? At least tell me that.”
Lena opened her eyes, and for a moment, a bright clarity shone within them. The fatigue that he’d seen from the moment she’d come into the house was gone, and now she looked at him with an expression of irritation.