I yanked my wrist free, ducking beneath his arm, panic souring through me. He turned to watch me run, making no move to stop me.
“When it’s time, your service will begin,” he warned.
I didn’t acknowledge his words as I fled through the forest. I didn’t need to. It wasn’t a request. He would call on me, and I would answer the call because there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. The sectorians held all the power in our society, all the magic. There were people of the Vold sector who could hunt me down. There were people of the Sjel sector who would sing out to my soul, drawing me back to the Weaver as easily as Lake Enke had sung me to its shore that very morning.
I needed a better plan.
I began to cry frustrated tears as I cleared the forest, passing several stewards on their way to Hearthenge. One of them rode a horse pulling a narrow, covered cart; two others led donkeys bearing baskets and sacks full of wares for the markets; and another cradled a satchel of scrolls for his trade. I kept my head down, ignoring the early morning trickle of activity as I passed by the ever-open gates to the canyon city. Breakwater Canyon consisted of two sheer mountain cliffs facing each other, with the whip of the waves far below churning at their base. Short, sturdy bridges criss-crossed the gap between the mountains, leading to the maze of tunnels and houses built into the rock. My feet moved by habit, my mind a million miles away, until I was outside my home, the wooden door staring me down.
I hesitated.
Home.
My fear didn’t diminish in the slightest.
It doubled. Tripled. Crippled me.
I pushed it down, though my shoulders hunched inward. Three knocks and I entered. She was sitting at the table: my mother. She was dressed for her honoured position at the Kynhouse of Hearthenge, her silks looped gracefully over her shoulders, thin golden chains holding the dress together in all the most flattering places. She was a precious carving swathed in liquid colour, her lips painted burgundy, her eyes bright and warm and knowing. She glowed, radiating beauty. It was all natural. She had no power—a true steward—but she had something better. Something that the people of Fyrio valued more than power. She was fertile. A rightful kynmaiden; a breeder, by royal decree. The sectorians and stewards alike vied for a chance to breed with her, though the stewards could rarely afford her. She had mothered seven children and was still young and beautiful.
Her hands curled around a delicate teacup, one of the many gifts given to her by one of her patrons. She stared at me as she blew on the steam. It smelled of spring. A special brew of raspberry, nettle, and red clover. She had traded one of her more expensive gifts for the tea and now drank it no fewer than five times a day in an attempt to boost her fertility. I watched as those warm and shimmering eyes of hers shuttered, the lovely mask falling away. Her slender brows turned down, her lips pressed together, her eyes narrowing as she took me in from head to toe. When she saw the mark upon my face, her eyes widened.
“You stupid, stupid girl,” she hissed out in disbelief, rising so quickly that her wooden stool clattered to the floorboards behind her. Our house was not big, but there was room enough for the both of us. I kept it clean, and she kept it beautiful. We were better off than most stewards. My mother’s status as a kynmaiden afforded us a home high in the canyon, where we could see the birds and catch the warmth of the sun. The less fortunate were down by the waves, with the icy spray upon their windowsills and the damp dripping down their stone walls.
I tried to tell myself as often as possible that I was lucky.
I tried just as often to believe it.
“It was a mistake.” My voice was pleading. “I tripped over a vevebre line. I didn’t mean to.”
She gripped my wrist—I didn’t even think she was listening to me—and pulled my hand up before her face, her eyes struck with horror. There was a thin, white line on my finger where the ring had been.
Her eyes crept back to mine slowly, her grip tightening. “Three stillbirths,” she whispered, and my stomach clenched in a horrible, sickening way. “Three deaths. Three souls. That is what I traded for your ring.”
She didn’t need to remind me. I was the one who had scrubbed the blood from the sheets and buried the tiny, mangled bodies in the earth. I was the one who had nursed her back to health, again and again.
For years, I had dreamt of their faces. I had dreamt of the women they would have become. I had dreamt of their robbed experiences, traded for my own robbed experiences.
“I’m sorry,” I pleaded, but it was no use.
Her expression had turned cold, her eyes shuttering. She was no longer angry, and that was worse. She gathered her shawl, pulling away from me and walking to the door. “If you are old enough to make deals with the Weaver, you are old enough to trade for a new ring. Better you than me, little monster.”
She locked the door behind her, and I sank to the ground, rubbing my bare finger.
Better them than me, little monster.
That’s what she had said as I bundled up the first babe, begging her to take back the deal. If she could have turned me from the house that day, she would have, but childrearing was a sacred thing amongst the people of Fyrio. The safety of a child was paramount, as they were so rare and precious. Even the steward children. A stillbirth was a commonality. Three stillbirths barely a surprise.
Turning a healthy young girl from her home?
That was unspeakable.
She had never wanted a child for herself. Her life was full already. She was treated as a princess, swathed in silks and prayers; worshipped during the day and left to peace during the night. My father had been a sectorian, but the Eloi man who had been called to my mother’s birthing bed had declared that I had not taken after my father. No power was detected within me. No allegiance to any of the sectors. Instead, he had denounced me. His edict had been immortalised in the wooden headboard of my mother’s bed, carved there by her nail file on the night she brought me home.
I do not sense her heart. Where it should be, there is only a storm. This child is doomed to death, and to share death with those closest to her.
After that, nobody would buy me. My sectorian father did not want a steward child at all, let alone a cursed one. News spread of the Eloi man’s edict, and even the poorest stewards who could never have hoped to afford a child turned their heads away from me. My mother was forced to keep me, forced—by sacred law—to protect me. To feed me and clothe me and send me off to be educated with the other steward children. It was during one of those warm school days that my slumbering power finally surfaced, my allegiance to the Vold sector singing through my blood. Some of the other children had cornered me beneath the great oak tree in the farthest reaches of the schoolyard. Their mothers had told them about my curse. They threw rocks at me and told me to run away. They told me that I didn’t belong with the rest of them.
I didn’t remember hurting them.
I didn’t remember anything but the roiling need for vengeance that surged through me. It took only a matter of minutes for me to break most of their bones. The schoolmarm had called upon the Sentinels to take me home, where my mother was ordered to keep me.
I told her that I was a Vold. That I felt it in my blood. Every time I muttered the word, I seemed to ratchet up her terror, until she finally swept from the house, locking me inside without a word. When she returned, her eyes were red and the ring was clutched in her hand.