Well of Sorrows Read online

  Colin moved to the corner of the room and stripped off his soiled breeches and underlinen, his back to his mother. He shoved his feet into the new clothes hurriedly, head ducked and body hunched. He didn’t like to be naked in front of his mother any longer than he had to any more. Even the thought made his cheeks burn, his chest and stomach tingle.

  He had just cinched the ties of the breeches together when his father stepped into the hovel.

  He swore under his breath the minute he saw Colin, his eyes going black. “Walter?”

  Before Colin could nod, his mother spat, “Of course it was Walter! Who else would it have been?”

  “Any of the goddamned townspeople who were here before us.”

  “Don’t you dare curse in front of Colin.” His mother’s voice had gone soft and flat; Colin involuntarily took a step backward, edging to the right. He hated it when his parents argued, but his father still stood in the doorway, blocking any exit. “And the townspeople here treated us fine when we arrived. They even gave you a job on the docks after the guild turned you away. A job you’d still have if you hadn’t been so arrogant!”

  “It was the arrival of the Breeze—”

  “No!” His mother sliced the air with one hand. “No! You will not blame the loss of your job on the arrival of more refugees from Andover. Yes, more and more of them arrive, practically each day. Yes, they’re fleeing Andover and the Feud. And yes, there are others being shipped here as well—prisoners given a second chance, Armory discharged for suspect reasons, and others. But that is not why you lost your job. You lost your job because you couldn’t stand the fact that you were a guildsman, a carpenter, and you were doing ‘menial’ labor on the docks because the guild here is Carrente and refused to accept a Bontari Family member into its ranks. You had to let everyone know that the work was beneath you. You had to put on airs. And you wonder why the regular dockworkers turned on you, why they made your life even more miserable. You let them goad you into a fight! Forget the fact that it was the only work available at the moment. Ignore the fact that you have a wife and son to support, that we barely have any funds left from Andover. Forget that—”

  But here his mother halted. Colin could see the redness around her eyes, could see the watery tears that she tried to hide by raising a hand to her quivering mouth and turning away. His father had straightened, hands fisted at his sides, but now, staring at her shaking shoulders, he faltered.

  “Ana—”

  “Don’t.”

  His father shifted up to his mother’s back. Reaching for her, he began again. “Ana, I don’t know—”

  But his mother flinched away before he could touch her, and he stiffened. His hands hovered for a moment, then closed into fists and pulled back in frustrated, impotent anger.

  He turned, stared at Colin, his expression tortured, jaw clenched.

  Then, without a word, he ducked through the door, the blanket falling back into place with a rustle. His mother sobbed, hunching forward over the lone table in the room.

  He hated it when they fought. He hated it when his mother cried.

  Colin slid toward the door and shoved his way out into the late afternoon sunlight, hesitated, trapped between frustrated anger at his father and his mother’s sobbing. He glared at the woman sitting outside her own door across from them, at her sympathetic frown, then spun and stormed off into the warren of narrow pathways between the shanties and huts, dodging men and women and children, all of them dressed in what had once been decent clothing but that now looked used and worn, most of them thin, those that had just arrived on ships gaunt or emaciated from the long journey or illness. He ignored them all, ignored the lost look in their eyes, the desperation, a look that had crept into his father’s eyes in the last few weeks, a look that had died in his mother’s eyes months ago.

  Colin dodged a pack of smaller kids, most of them half naked, and wound his way to the center of Lean-to, a small rounded area of land with a large plinth of natural stone thrust up through the packed dirt. The sounds of the refugees from Andover surrounded him—shouts, the barking of a dog, the screams of children, the wailing of babies—all filtered through the sunlight and the stench of too many unwashed bodies pressed too closely together. He considered heading back into Portstown, back to the streets, but the fear of running into Walter and his gang again forced him to turn in the other direction, out toward the plains to the north and east of town.

  A breeze gusted in from the ocean as soon as he moved outside the rough but growing boundary of Lean-to, pushing Colin’s dark brown hair down into his eyes, bringing with it the taste of seaweed and salt. The ground began a slow incline, so unlike the sharp cliffs and terraced land around Trent, and within moments Colin found himself traipsing through grass, the stalks reaching up beyond his knees, the unripe grain pattering against his thighs. He reached down to run his hands through the grass, but the edges were too sharp, the seed heads too prickly.

  He trudged up the crest of land to the north of Portstown and took a moment to stare down at the port, at the narrow docks that struck out into the water, the scattering of wooden buildings that made up the town’s center, and the large stone building that belonged to the Proprietor, a low wall surrounding it. A second stone building stood off to one side, almost as large as the Proprietor’s house: the church, its small spire topped off with the tilted cross of Holy Diermani. Only a few streets cut between the buildings, one running along the docks, one down to the warehouses to the south—Water Street, where Walter and his gang had caught Colin that afternoon—and three jutting out into the land and the twenty or so buildings that had been erected further inland. Homes and cottages and barns given by the Proprietor to the more prominent people in town continued out beyond where the streets trailed into dust and grass, most of them with small patches of plowed land, early spring crops already growing.

  Lean-to had formed over the last few months to the north of the main portion of Portstown. At first nothing more than a few hovels on the bluff overlooking the port, with the influx of hundreds from Andover it had grown into a mass of huts and shacks and tents, all crammed against one another. From this height, Colin could see the section that housed most of the craftsmen, people who’d belonged to a guild in Andover but who weren’t part of the Carrente Family or any of its allies. These huts and tents appeared more orderly, with clothes hung out on lines, flapping in the wind, and smoke rising from cook fires. The majority of the tents farther north were ragged, dirtier, barely standing, and haphazardly placed. Most of the prisoners given clemency if they agreed to help settle the New World had ended up there, along with anyone else who had caused problems after arriving in Portstown. And people from all over Andover had arrived, representing all of the twelve Families of the Court, from all walks of life.

  Except that here in Portstown, here in the New World, there was no Court, there were no Families. At least, that was what they’d all been led to believe in Andover: that the New World was full of possibility, of riches, of dreams.

  Colin snorted. That hadn’t been true. There was a Proprietor in every settlement on the new coast. The Proprietor held the power in each of the towns: power sanctioned by one of the Families. The Proprietor of Portstown owned the land for as far as anyone could see, in all directions. He and the townspeople—the men and women who’d founded the town and all of their descendants fifty years back—were beholden to the Proprietor’s Family, to the Court, an extension of Andover.

  And over the past few months, they’d made it clear that those fleeing the Feud in Andover who were not part of the Carrente Family weren’t wanted.

  Colin turned his back on the town in disgust and faced east, out across the plains, at the smooth folds in the land covered in grass, dotted here and there with copses of trees or broken chunks of stone like the one in the middle of Lean-to. He struck off farther north, toward where one of those stones cut through the earth in a flat shelf, and sat down, legs crossed beneath him.

 
He’d found this place within the first week of arriving in Portstown, when the excitement over the new town and the new land had still been fresh, when he’d been trying to forget the death and disease that had plagued the three ships during the trip across the Arduon. He’d come to this rock and simply stared out over the grass that seemed to stretch forever, rustling in the wind, rippling in various shades of green and gold and yellow, dotted with the shadows of scattered clouds.

  Now, he leaned back on his arms, stared up into the blue sky, watched the dark circling of a hawk high above, and slowly the tension in his shoulders ebbed. The sun beat down with soothing warmth, and heat radiated up from the rough granite beneath his palms. He closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, smelled the grass, the earth, the stone, listened to the shriek of the hawk above, faint with distance, to the wind as it rustled in the stalks surrounding him. The shame over pissing his breeches drained away, along with the anger at his father and his hatred of Walter and Portstown and the Carrente. All of it faded, even the throbbing of the bruises in his arms and on his chest.

  Relaxed, he opened his eyes and gazed into the distance, to where the rumpled land met the sky.

  The openness of that world called to him. If he breathed slowly enough, if he grew still enough, he could almost hear it.

  His father returned to the hut after dark.

  Colin sat before the fire. His mother sat on one of the sleeping pallets, Colin’s torn shirt in her lap, her needle and thread flashing in the light as she mended it. A pile of assorted clothes sat next to her: shirts and breeches and linens from a few of the other members of Lean-to that also needed repair.

  His parents looked at each other a moment after his father ducked through the entrance, his mother pausing in her work. Then Tom’s gaze fell on Colin.

  He moved toward the fire, reached forward to ruffle Colin’s hair, but Colin ducked his head and shifted out of the way.

  “Colin, come here.”

  When Colin didn’t move, his father squatted down next to him by the fire with a grunt and held out his hand. “I have something for you.”

  He still hadn’t forgiven his father, but he couldn’t help himself. He looked, then frowned.

  Tom held what appeared to be a wadded up ball of string.

  “What is it?”

  His father grinned. “Take it.”

  As Colin pulled it from his father’s hand, Tom settled down beside him. Unraveling the loose ends of the straps, Colin realized it wasn’t string, but leather. In its center, a wide rectangular piece was wrapped around a knotted ball. The straps were tied to the rectangular piece through slits. One of the straps had ties on the end; the other ended in the knotted ball.

  “It’s a sling,” his father explained after making himself comfortable. “I made it this afternoon.”

  “You made him a sling?” his mother asked sharply. “What for?”

  “So he can protect himself,” his father growled. Then he drew in a shuddering breath and said more calmly, “So he can defend himself from Walter and his gang.”

  His mother’s silence spoke volumes.

  “Ana, he needs something he can use to protect himself from those bastards. He needs to be able to fight back.”

  “He shouldn’t need to fight back at all.”

  “No, he shouldn’t. But I don’t think anyone in Portstown, least of all the Proprietor, is going to do anything about it. Walter’s the Proprietor’s son for God’s sakes! Colin’s almost twelve. I think he can handle a sling. I had one when I was his age. Unless you’d rather I give him a knife to defend himself with?”

  His mother’s eyes narrowed. “No. I don’t want Colin running around with a knife.”

  “Then the sling will have to do.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “I can’t do anything about finding work, not at the moment. At least let me try to fix this.”

  Colin thought his mother would argue more, but she only closed her eyes and shook her head before returning to her mending.

  Tom breathed a sigh of relief, barely audible, and the tension in his shoulders eased. He turned to Colin and smiled. The first real smile Colin had seen on his face in months.

  “Tomorrow morning, I’ll take you out to the plains, and we’ll see if I can remember how to use it,” he said.

  Colin barely slept that night and not because his parents argued in hushed voices from their sleeping pallet not ten paces away, his mother fretting, his father trying to calm her. He curled up in his own pallet, back toward them, the sling clutched in one hand, a tight grin on his face.

  In the morning, he was dressed and ready before either of his parents. The bacon fried too slowly, the fire burned too cold, and time dragged, until finally his mother snapped, “Colin, settle down and stop pacing! Your father will take you out as soon as he’s finished breakfast. Now, go fill this pot with water before I strangle you!”

  Colin froze, then snatched the pot from his mother’s hands and tore out of the hut, his mother mumbling, “Holy Diermani preserve us from overexcited children.”

  “He’s almost of age, Ana. He’s not a child anymore.”

  Colin didn’t hear his mother’s response, already racing through the paths between tents and shanties toward one of the numerous streams that drained down toward the port. He dodged an old woman as she dumped dirty water into his path, leaped over a barking dog as the woman shouted something unintelligible after him, rounded the last corner before the stream—

  And plowed into a girl headed in the other direction.

  They tumbled to the ground in a mess of arms and legs, buckets and water. Bruises that Colin had forgotten since last night awoke as he struck the ground, and the girl’s elbow caught him in the cheek as they landed, the girl crying out. Frigid water sluiced down Colin’s shirt from one of the girl’s buckets, and for a moment Colin couldn’t breathe.

  Then he gasped, sucked in a harsh breath and rolled to the side, onto his stomach.

  “What in Diermani’s eight bloody hells were you doing?” the girl shrieked. “And look what you’ve done. I just cleaned these buckets!”

  Colin heard feet stamping, heard the rattle of a bucket’s handle, and then a sudden pause.

  “Oh, God.” Someone dropped to the dirt beside him and rolled him over. “Are you hurt? You aren’t hurt, are you?”

  Colin sucked in another breath and winced at the feeling of his shirt plastered to his chest with mud.

  “My mother’s going to kill me,” he muttered.

  The girl—slightly taller than him, a year or two older, with short wild brown hair and freckles across her nose—leaned back onto her heels and glared down at him with hard green eyes. “She should, and you’d deserve it, tearing around here like that.” Her frown deepened. “You’re Colin, the carpenter’s son, aren’t you?”

  He coughed and sat upright. “Yes.” He took a closer look at the girl. “Who are you?”

  She snorted. “Karen. I was on the Merry Weather.” Her voice broke, filled with dark inflections. She couldn’t hold his gaze, her eyes dropping, darting down and away. More than half the passengers on the Merry Weather had died of some kind of wasting sickness on the voyage across the Arduon.

  A moment later, she cleared her throat. “Why is your mother going to kill you?”

  Colin groaned. “Because this was my last clean shirt.” Karen snorted. “That’s easy to fix. Take it off.”

  Colin hesitated, and Karen rolled her eyes.

  “Fine, don’t take it off. Let your mother see you like that.” She scrambled back to her feet, bucket in one hand, and headed toward the stream.

  “Wait!” Colin said, grabbing his pot and following her. She’d already retrieved her other bucket and knelt by the stream, one bucket in the water, the second beside her, by the time he caught up.

  She looked up at him, then extended one hand. “Well?”

  He unbuttoned his shirt, fumbling a little, then handed the shirt over.

  Karen gasped at the
bruises across his chest and side, a few yellowed and fading, but most blue-black and purple. “How did you get those?”

  Colin backed up a quick step when she reached out to touch him, already self-conscious without his shirt on. “Doesn’t matter.”

  She gave him a skeptical look but didn’t say anything, turning back to the stream. She plunged his shirt into the water. “This shouldn’t be too hard to clean, since the mud is fresh.” She began scrubbing the shirt vigorously.

  Colin watched her from behind. A breeze gusted from the ocean and all of the little hairs on his arms prickled and stood on end. He shivered.

  Karen held up the shirt, frowned at it, then scrubbed it again before declaring it acceptable.

  “It’s not perfect,” she said, holding it out to him, “but it should do.” She sluiced out her own buckets, then filled them with water. When she turned back, she added, “You should really learn to clean your own shirts though.”

  Then she smiled and, buckets in hand, moved off.

  Colin stood stock-still, stunned, his shirt held out before him, until the gusting breeze brought him back.

  He hastily put the shirt back on, grimacing as the damp fabric stuck to his skin, then filled his pot and headed back home.

  His mother gave him a raised eyebrow when she saw his shirt, but she said nothing. His father didn’t even notice.

  “Ready to learn the sling?” he asked, as soon as Colin handed the pot of water over to his mother.

  “Yes.”

  “Then grab it and let’s head down to the shore.”

  “The shore?” his mother asked. “I thought you were going to the plains?”

  “I changed my mind. We’ll practice on the plains eventually, but for now there’ll be more stones on the beach.”

  Colin retrieved his sling from his mother.

  “Be careful,” she called after them, hands on hips. “Especially you, Tom.”