Well of Sorrows (3 page)

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.”

His father grunted as they ducked through the door, and then they were moving down through Lean-to, in the direction of Portstown, but toward the northern end. Most of the people they met nodded to them or raised a hand in greeting. A few of the men called out to his father.

When they reached the edge of Lean-to, a group of three men joined them, most craftsmen Colin recognized from the voyage east on
Trader’s Luck
.

“Mornin’, Tom. Heading down to the docks?” Paul asked, falling into step beside Colin. Shorter than his father and broader of shoulder, he’d been a smith in Andover with hopes of making master in fewer than the typical twelve years as journeyman here in the New World.

“Not today. I haven’t found work on the docks in over a week.”

“None of us have,” Paul said grimly, and the other two who’d joined them murmured agreement. “They’re using those of us in Lean-to less and less, preferring their own men or the crews on the ships, even when it’s obvious they could use the help. I don’t like it.”

Tom frowned. “Neither do I, but what can we do about it?” Paul traded a look with the others. “We don’t know. But if you haven’t noticed, it’s becoming a little desperate here in Lean-to. Most of us have used up whatever money we brought with us from Andover, and the food is running short. We can’t afford anything in the town; they’ve jacked up their prices, at least for those of us from certain Families. And they don’t want to barter with us for goods or services.”

“And we can’t hunt the game in the forest any more,” one of the others mumbled.

His father halted in his tracks. “What?”

Paul nodded. “The Proprietor just issued a new decree. He’s claimed the forests to the north and south for himself and the Carrente Family. Anyone caught poaching is to be put in the penance locks in the center of town for two days. Anyone caught twice will be hanged. Or sent back to Andover in chains.”

“Which means death for certain.” Colin thought the man’s name was Sam. “ They’ll put you in the Armor y, send you to the front ranks once the Feud starts in earnest. Most of those here in Lean-to are already criminals, have already been given the choice of the Armor y or the New World. If they’re sent back from here . . .”

A troubled look crossed his father’s face. After a pause, he continued toward Portstown. “Where does he expect us to find fresh meat then?” he asked.

“I don’t think the Proprietor expects us to find meat at all,” Paul grumbled.

“So what should we do?” Sam asked.

Tom didn’t answer for a moment. Then: “Nothing, for now. Except what we’ve been doing.”

“And what about meat? What about food?” the third man snarled. “I didn’t come here to starve at the Carrente’s hands.”

Tom caught his eye and held it. “I’ll think of something, Shay.”

Paul nodded and broke away, Sam and Shay following, headed toward the docks. Colin’s father watched, then turned toward the shore in the other direction, one hand on Colin’s shoulder. He squeezed once and smiled. “Nothing to worry about, Colin. Let’s find some rocks for that sling.”

But Colin heard the lie in his voice, saw it in the troubled look in his eyes.

They moved down from the grass into the sand along the beach, picking up stones as they went. Gulls and other shorebirds banked into the breeze overhead, and waves tumbled and crashed into the strand, foaming white as they drove up onto the beach. Seaweed had collected in clumps, left behind by the tide to dry out in the sun, and sand fleas hopped away in clouds as they passed. Small crabs—too small to be worth catching and eating—crawled among the occasional piece of driftwood. Closer to the water, where the tide was retreating, clams spit jets of water up from where they’d burrowed beneath the sand. The sharp scent of salt filled the air; Colin could taste it when he licked his lips.

Once they’d moved far enough north of the town, they halted.

“Now,” his father said, taking the sling from Colin’s grip and unwrapping the straps, “the sling is a weapon, not a toy. It can be extremely dangerous, and your mother made me promise that I’d teach you how to use it properly.

“See these ties here? They’re used to anchor this end of the sling to your wrist.” As he spoke, his father tied the sling to his own wrist. “The strap on this side is meant to dangle between your thumb and first finger, like this. The other strap, the one with the knot tied in the end, is held in the same hand. This forms a small pouch with the rectangular piece of leather, like a little hammock. To load it, you let the sling dangle down and place the stone in the pocket.” His father placed a rounded stone in the pouch. “When you want to release the stone, or whatever it is that you’re trying to throw, you let go of the knot.” His father let the knot go and the stone dropped down into the sand with a soft thump. His father reached down to retrieve it. “Obviously, you need to get some momentum behind the stone before you release it. You do that by twirling the sling, either to the side if you want to sling it underhand, or if you want more power behind it, overhead.”

His father placed the stone back in the sling, then looked at Colin. “So, let’s see if I remember how to sling at all. You’d better step back.”

Colin took a few quick steps backward, and his father began twirling the sling for an underhanded throw down the beach. The sling picked up speed, his father using his entire arm—

And then suddenly the strap with the knot snapped outward. The stone arched up, a black speck against the light blue of the sky, then fell and kicked up a plume of sand a significant distance away. Tom let out a yelp of laughter, then turned toward Colin. “Not where I was aiming, but . . .” He trailed off into a grin. “Now it’s your turn.”