The Pain Merchants

“Merlaina Oskov.” Tali would give me Mama’s stern face again for lying, but having an Elder know your name was trouble in a box. They paid heed to none but the Luminary, and he paid heed to none but the Duke, just like all of Geveg’s military-appointed leaders. Wasn’t safe to get noticed by any of them.

“Do you know these wards?”

“No, sir.”

The chatty one’s brown eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open. “But—”

“I work the sundown to sunup shift at the taproom,” I said quickly. “Don’t see how boys would cross my path at those hours.”

Sinnote pinch-twisted his friend’s arm. “I don’t think that’s her.”

“It is her. She’s even wearing the same dirty clothes.”

“You’re wrong.”

League Elders weren’t fools, much as I needed this one to be.

“What time did you see her?” he asked.

“Three,” the boy said.

“Five,” Sinnote said at the same time. He grimaced and his freckles wiggled.

The Elder’s mouth twitched at the corners, then he reached for my arm. “Come with me.”

I jerked away. If someone was kidnapping apprentices again, getting trapped in a League treatment room was the last thing I needed. “Pardon, but I can’t. I have to get home.”

“Your family will understand. Now come!” The Elder grabbed my forearm mongoose-quick. His eyes popped wide, then narrowed. “You are a Taker.”

“Let me go!” My shout echoed in the domed antechamber. Beaded heads turned and everyone stopped and stared. Green vests shimmered against grey slate and stone as more lingered. A man passing behind the Elder stopped and watched me with an uncertain frown on his face.

“Stop struggling, girl. I’m not going to hurt you.”

But he was. My skin burned where his fingers dug into my arm. Saints, he was strong.

The wards gaped. The crowd stared. No one moved to help. Why would they? I was just some river rat and nobody questioned an Elder, though I’d bet a week’s lunches that if my hair was Baseeri black, someone would have stepped forward.

“I said, let go.” I kicked him in the knee, smearing grime on his white uniform. And he did, sucking in air with a wet hiss.

I ran for the north gate entrance, crossing the rest of the entrance hall and ducking into the side foyer. Apprentices and wards parted as I barrelled into them. Gasps and jingles drowned out the Elder’s raspy orders, but I could guess what they were. Guards, get that girl. Lock her up, poke her, prod her, find out if she’s the abomination they claim.

I shoved my way past a knot of first cords by the exit and slammed open the door. Sunshine felt like freedom, but I wasn’t off League property yet. The north gate glinted ahead. Copper clanged against stone as I burst through.

Heart racing, I slipped into the crowd coming in for healing. They filled the circular limestone courtyard outside, more than I usually saw this early in the morning, but it didn’t look like many were getting inside. Children in velvet played tag between grandmothers in patched cotton. A farmer in muddy overalls hugged a bleeding hand to his chest. Dozens of fishermen, soldiers, merchants and servants mixed together like a beggar’s stew. I elbowed my way through and learned two new swears from one of the soldiers posted at the main bridge.

At the edge of League Circle, bridges and canals fanned out like wheel spokes to the rest of Geveg. Pairs of soldiers stood on every corner, some mast-straight at attention, others leaning against lamp posts. A few pole boats bobbed at the end of the floating docks as Baseeri aristocrats stepped out, their military aides and bodyguards close at their heels. On the left, the lake sparkled as far as you could see, already dotted with fishing boats.

I slowed, trying to avoid being noticed by the closest pair of soldiers. Thankfully, they were bored types and neither looked over. I jumped over a low stone wall and dropped under the nearest bridge, stomping down a pad of water hyacinths as I landed. Cool water splashed up my legs. I hid knee-deep in lake and flowers and tried not to think about crocodiles.

Considering I’d just kicked a League Elder, that wasn’t hard. A croc’ll snap you and spin you down underwater, but a furious Elder might throw Tali out of the League. He might make her repay the healing we’d stolen. He might—

Why weren’t the League guards chasing me?

I stood on tiptoe and tilted my ear towards shore. Footsteps, coughs, the nervous babble that always followed crowds, but no shouts. No thudding boots.

He let me kick him and run?

Slowly, I climbed up the lakewall and hopped back over. Still no guards. Not even a fuss in the crowd, just the usual small groups of twos and threes, scurrying along with their heads down. Maybe the Elder thought he could find me at one of the taprooms. I grinned. He’d find no Melana anywhere. Or was it Meletta? Didn’t matter. She was gone as goose grease.

There might be guards looking for me, but bright green League uniforms were easy to spot. Folks tended to give way when they saw armed men coming.

My stomach rumbled again. A painful rumble that twisted up my guts and said it was way past breakfast. And lunch. And supper. I headed for the docks, but my guts also said I was too late to cut bait.

“The boats are out, Nya. I’ve got nothing for you.”

“Sorry, Nya, I already had some boys wash the docks. Did it for cheap too.”

“If you’d been here earlier I had carts to load, but that’s all done now.”

Every berth foreman had the same answer, though a few looked sorry to turn me away. Especially Barnikoff, who usually found something for me to do. He’d lost three daughters and he liked having me around to tell stories to while he scraped barnacles off the hulls, but there were no boats in dry dock today.

Nor was there any work at the bakery, and the butcher had enough people to yank the feathers off chickens and guineafowl. The glassblower had two girls running sand and didn’t need me. A line of strapping boys my age waited outside the blacksmith, scowling at a girl I knew. Aylin was dancing by a river-rock garden wall outside the show house, a peek at what you’d see inside if you paid the outrageous prices for their food, drink and entertainment. She gleamed, her pale shoulders stark against the deep red and gold of her dress. Yellow beads traced her neckline and glittered at the ends of her short sleeves.

I headed over. With all the officers, aristocrats and merchants that went past her every day to spend their stolen wealth, Aylin knew more gossip than a crew of old women. If anyone had work for me, she’d know about it and I could sure as sugar use a job fast. My pockets were as empty as my belly. Rent had been due yesterday and I could avoid Millie for only so long. Warm nights promised I wouldn’t be cold, but there were other things in the night for a girl sleeping under a bush to worry about. And most of them wore blue uniforms.

I wove through the flow of people coming off the ferry and hopped up on the wall behind Aylin.

“Please tell me you know about some work. I need good news.”

“Hi, Nya.” She tossed her long red hair and waved at a well dressed merchant walking by. He flipped up his brocaded collar and ignored her. “Nah, just the usual stuff. Are all the jobs taken already?”

“I got a late start. Think the canal master is hiring leaf pullers?” Water hyacinths clogged the canals every summer and made it tough for the pole boats to get through. Dangerous work, but it paid well.

“Feel the need to dodge crocs?”

“Feel the need to eat.”

Her smile vanished. “Oh, that bad?”

“Would I risk becoming a meal to get one if it wasn’t?”

Her smile returned. “Hey, handsome, come inside! We have the

prettiest dancers in the Three Territories,” she called to a muscled soldier in Baseeri blue. He elbowed his friends and waved, but didn’t come over. “No, you’re smarter than that. I was telling Kaida the other day how you—”

“Aylin, are they hiring?”

“Oh, no, not any more. Morning, gentlemen! Come inside, three plays a day, the finest actors in Geveg!” Another set of soldiers went by, all wearing the blue and silver osprey emblem on their bulging chests. Baseeri soldiers always lined the streets, but I hadn’t seen so many on patrol since the occupation began.

My toes twitched with a sudden urge to be anywhere else. “Why all the soldiers today?”

“Verlatta’s under siege.”

“Seriously?”

She nodded and her dangling shell earrings swayed in time with her hips. “I had a Baseeri officer stop to talk on his way in last night. Said His Dukeship is after Verlatta’s pynvium mines.”

Even the late-morning sun couldn’t keep my shivers away. Baseer was two hundred miles upriver, on the borderlands between the Three Territories and the Northern Reaches, but it felt like the Duke was breathing down our necks again. He’d already conquered Sorille and now controlled most of the good farming land, but he hadn’t had any pynvium mines until he conquered us. We tried to fight him, regain our freedom, but it hadn’t worked. Once he had Verlatta, he’d rule all three lands his great-grandfather had granted independence to long ago.

“First our mines, now theirs. You’d think the Duke would have enough to heal everyone in Baseer by now.”

Aylin shrugged. “It’s not for the healing—it’s for the weapons. If he’d stop wasting his pynvium on weapons, he wouldn’t need so much. A vicious circle is what it is. Greedy toad. It’s his own fault.”

Aylin was right, but it was more sick than vicious if you asked me. Send your soldiers into battle and use their pain to fill your pynvium weapons, just so you could go attack other folks and steal their pynvium, so you could heal your people because you used all your pynvium to make the weapons in the first place. Stupid. Just plain stupid.

“There are a lot of people,” Aylin mused, watching the refugees shuffling off the ferry. The Duke had long since set up checkpoints on all the mainland bridges and roads, and without proper Baseeri travel seals, you didn’t get to pass. Getting proper travel seals wasn’t as hard as you might expect—it just cost you everything you had. Folks had tried forging them, but checkpoint soldiers were very good at spotting fakes.

“Too many people,” I agreed. Families in tailored clothes with the bright beaded collars popular in Verlatta shuffled beside families in sewn-together rags. Each person carried a bag or basket—probably all they could grab before they fled Verlatta.

And every last one of them would also be looking for work in Geveg.

I glanced at a pain merchant’s shop down the way, its sign swinging in the breeze. Teasing. Taunting. Tempting. Maybe I could risk it. Plenty of refugees around I could sneak some pain from and one sale might get me through a few more days. I just had to find someone who looked bruised or cut, nothing too serious that a Taker might recognise wasn’t a real injury of mine. Their lack of real training might be a lucky break for me.

Maybe Aylin knew which Takers couldn’t sense? She’d want to know why though, and much as I liked Aylin, I wasn’t sure how good she was at keeping secrets. With five pain merchant shops in Geveg, the chances of one having a senseless Taker were—

A man was watching us, almost hidden behind a hibiscus bush two shops down. Dressed fancy too, in smooth yellow and green silk. He wasn’t carrying anything, so he wasn’t off the ferry. An aristocrat’s son? He glanced from me to Aylin and his lips wrinkled in a vaguely familiar frown.

“I’d better get going, see if anyone needs a hauler in the market,” I said. The show house was Baseeri-owned, so I didn’t care if my stained shirt and wild curls scared away its customers, but I didn’t want Aylin to lose her job over it. “You’ll let me know if you hear of any jobs?”

“Of course.”

I hopped off the wall and the world spun around my head.

“Easy there.” Aylin grabbed my arm and kept me standing. “You OK?”

“Just a little dizzy. Moved too fast.”

“You’re so skinny I could wear you in my belt loops. Do you need money for something to eat?” She reached for a pocket.

“No thanks, I’m all right,” I said quickly. I couldn’t pay her back and Grannyma always said a debt owed was a friendship lost.

Aylin frowned as if she didn’t believe me, but cared too much to call me on it. “Tell Tali I said hello.”

“I will.”

Things were still a little swirly, but I tried my best to walk straight and not worry her further. At the farmers’ market, a heavyset woman with a basket full of bread caught my eye. Not an aristocrat, but her pink shirt matched her patterned skirt and looked neither worn nor patched, so she probably worked for one. Kitchens most likely. She was looking at mangoes, picking up one at a time and sniffing them. My stomach poked at me again, pain caused more from guilt over what I was planning than from hunger, but no one would hire a girl who kept fainting.

I swayed as I walked by and lightly shoved the woman into the mango bin. Mangoes wiggled and several rolled off the top of the yellow-orange stack. She cried out and grabbed the table edge, dropping her basket and the fruit on to the rough street stones.

“I’m so sorry!” I knelt and picked up her basket before it could roll over and dump the bread. Good stuff too, warm and wrapped in cinnamon-scented cloth. “Here you go. I hope it didn’t get dirty.”

She snatched the basket out of my hands. “Stupid ’Veg!” she swore. “Watch where you’re going.”

“I’m so sorry. You’re right, I should watch where I’m going. There’s no excuse for such clumsiness.” I tucked two mangoes into my pocket and handed her three others. “I think these are the last of them.”

She glanced at my non-black hair and scoffed. “Useless, all of you.”

“Fine day to you.” I dipped a bow.

She harrumphed and turned back to her shopping.

I waited a heartbeat, then two. No cries of alarm, no angry farmer racing after me to demand payment. I slid into the crowd, letting it take me downstream of the market district and into the tradesmen’s corner.

Knees quivering, I settled down in the grass under the big palm tree in front of Trivent’s Leathers, leaning against the trunk with my legs out straight. Madame Trivent didn’t care for folks resting under her tree, which is why it was usually vacant. Not much open space in Geveg was unoccupied any more.

I bit through the mango’s skin, sucked the juice up, ignoring the pinch in my stomach as I tried to gobble it up quicker than I could eat it. The first went down fast and I started on the second, slower this time.

I’d missed all the morning work, but there’d be more after lunch. The fishing boats returned mid-afternoon, so if I went now, I could get work unloading today’s catch. The Sunset Runner was on a good streak this week. They’d kept me almost two hours longer than any other loader on the docks the other day. Said I’d done a good job too.

I stopped mid-chew. The fancy man was back, watching me from behind a fence. Me, not Aylin. No good reason why any man would be watching me, unless he was from the League.

The League! That’s where I’d seen him, passing behind the Elder and the wards.

The mango soured in my mouth. A League man overhears that I can shift and starts following me? What if he was a Tracker? I hadn’t heard talk of any since their kidnapping spree during the war. Rumours said they tracked for us and the Duke, so the Healers they grabbed never knew which side they might wind up healing. Folks whispered about Trackers like they whispered about marsh spirits and the haunted barge wreck. Except Trackers were real.

Keep chewing. Don’t let on you’ve seen him. Too close to the marshes to risk another dip in a canal. Would he try to grab me in the open or—

“Shoo, girl!” Two more little words that always meant trouble for me. Madame Trivent thumped me on the head with her broom. The straw bristles stabbed behind my ears and yanked some hair out.

My mango dropped to the ground. I snatched it back and scrambled to my feet, ducking her wide swings. “I’m going, I’m going.”

“Filthy ’Veg. Don’t you be bothering my customers.” She swept me down the walk like dust and shoved me into the street. “Don’t come back!”

Folks put extra steps between me and them as they passed. The soldiers didn’t like fuss, and trouble had a nasty way of sticking to other people like flung mud. Mama used to say the rock in the river never knows the misery of the rock in the sun, but I’d change places with that river rock. Under the water, the river rock had protection against a fancy League Tracker.

Who was now gone.

I turned a slow circle, but caught no glimpse of yellow and green silk behind bush, tree or corner. Hunger’ll play with your mind, but I didn’t think I’d imagined him.

I needed to be a river rock.

Slouching, I slipped into a wave of refugees who hadn’t seen me booted off and didn’t shy away. Home sounded like a good idea. If I stayed low, stayed quiet, maybe the fancy man would leave me alone.

Even a rock knew that was a foolish dream. Trackers didn’t let you go. They dragged you off in the middle of the night and no one ever saw you again. Made you heal the soldiers. Keep the rebellion alive. Fight the Duke. Chase him out of Geveg. Keep the pynvium in Geveg.

Hadn’t worked.

But I was useless to the League, and Geveg had no more soldiers to heal and fight. The League didn’t even know who I was. I rarely spoke to anyone there except Tali and she wouldn’t reveal me. How could—

I sucked in a breath. The north-gate guards. They knew me. They’d seen me run out earlier, scared as a scalded cat.

I ran the last block to Millie’s boarding house. It sat on the edge of Pond End Canal not far from where the chicken ranchers tossed their rubbish. The view wasn’t bad and the smell kept it cheap. I thumped up the creaky stairs to my room on the third floor.

My door was pegged shut.

Tears bubbled up a drop faster than the sobs. I was only a day late on my rent. Millie had never pegged me out for being a day late before.

“You have your board money?” Millie stood on the landing at the end of the hall, her skinny brown arms folded tight across her chest. The woman had ears to make a bat jealous.

“I will by this evening, I swear.”

She tossed her hands up and scoffed, then started back down the stairs. “I’ve got your gear. Come and get it before I sell it.”

“Millie, please, give me a few hours. I’ll pay soon as the boats come in.”

“I have three families wanting the room.”

“Please, I’m good for it, you know I am. I’ll pay double tomorrow.”

“Got folks willing to pay that now.” She shoved my clothes basket into my hands, then wiped her palms on her apron. White flour clouds puffed outward. “Go and stay with your sister in her fancy dorm room.”

Millie knew the League did bed checks. She rubbed my nose in it cos the League had turned her son away. Not enough talent, they said. Couldn’t heal a grazed knee. He’d even been turned away by the pain merchants, and Takers didn’t need much talent to work there. Some of the new swears I’d learned came to mind, but I stilled my tongue. Millie had the cheapest rooms. Throw me out today, take me in tomorrow, and she’d never think twice about either. She was also the only boarding house in Geveg that believed me when I said I was seventeen and old enough to rent.

I shuffled back to the street, my fingers gripping the basket filled with everything I owned. Two shirts, a skirt and three unmatched socks. I lifted my chin. Tears dripped off on to my hands. I had half a day to find work. Maybe I could untangle nets through the night. Barnikoff might let me sleep in his shed if I tidied it up. And there was always—

Breath died in my throat.

Saints save me, the fancy man was back.

Chapter Three

Strength left my legs and I flopped into the weeds beside Millie’s path. I sat cross-legged, basket in my lap, chin on the basket. The tears hadn’t stopped and they dripped tap tap tap on the wicker.

The fancy man kept watching. Watched me sit and cry. Open my basket and pull out a sock. Blow my nose on it. Put it back. Watched me watching him. He never moved. I’m not sure he even blinked.

Gave me shiverfeet.

“Nya?”

I yelped. So did the pigtailed girl I hadn’t noticed walk up beside me. A flock of bright waterbirds at the lake’s edge took flight, dozens of tiny wings flapping like sheets in a windstorm.

“Enzie!” I scolded. She’d shared a room with Tali for a while until a bed opened up in the wards’ area, the orphanage part of the League where they took in potential Healers. I’d never seen her without her League uniform on before. She looked more like a little girl with her brown hair bound in ribbons, and a simple grey shirt and trousers like mine. Hers were newer though and didn’t have patches on the knees and elbows. “For the love of Saint Saea, don’t sneak up on folks like that.”

“Sorry, Nya.” Enzie settled into the weeds beside me. “Tali asked me to give you a message.”

My chill returned. “Is she OK?” If she got into trouble because of me, I’d throw myself to the crocs right there.

Enzie nodded. “She wants you to meet her at the pretty circle at three. Under the tree.”

The flower gardens. Tali had called it “the pretty circle” when she was four. We’d had picnics there and sat on a soft blue blanket under the biggest fig tree I’d ever seen.

“What’s going on, Enzie?” Tali had never been sneaky before. She either spoke her mind clearly or didn’t speak it at all.

“I don’t know.” Her green eyes looked away and she sucked in her bottom lip.

“You can tell me.”

“I don’t know, honest. But I’m scared anyway.”

I leaned over and hugged her. Poor girl. She was only ten. She had talent, even if she couldn’t use it for two more years. It hummed in her like the thrum of a bridge when the soldiers marched over it. “It’s OK, Enzie.”

She sniffled and clung to me. I rubbed her back in small circles. The fancy man kept watching. I stared at him hard, putting a dare into it, though I couldn’t say what the challenge was.

Whatever he saw in it, he declined. He turned and walked away.

I hugged Enzie tighter, suddenly just as scared as she and not knowing why.

I walked the full three miles across Geveg to the gardens, on the opposite side of the island from Millie’s. Though the gardens were public property, they were inside the aristocrats’ district. Powdered women with pearls braided through their black, piled hair glared at me as I headed for the gates. Baseeri soldiers stood watch at all four entrances and kept out the folks aristocrats didn’t like seeing—which pretty much meant everyone who wasn’t from Baseer. They weren’t supposed to by law, and sometimes you could talk your way in if you looked clean and sharp and didn’t mumble your request, but nobody went in carrying a clothes basket. Squatters were not allowed under any circumstances.

I’d been inside three times with Tali since the war ended. She’d picked a lousy place for a secret meeting.

I dipped a sock into the lake and washed as best I could, then hid my basket under a leafy hibiscus bush not far from the eastern entrance. Clean? Somewhat. Sharp? Not at all. At least I didn’t mumble.

The soldier watched me walk up. I didn’t slow when I neared him, making it clear I planned to go inside and did so often.

“Pardon, miss.” He stepped forward and held his arm out across the path, looking a lot like some of the trees that grew inside. Tall, wide, brown, with a mess of gold on top. Unusual to see a blond Baseeri, but he did have the Baseeri nose and chin. Maybe he looked more like a bird than a tree. Or a bird in a tree.

“Yes?”

“Your business here?”