Song of Ashes

29: Sweet Rolls and Taxes

Good fortune had never been close at hand for Sarka, though, and coming to a new land did little to change her ill luck.

The city of Deynaport was much more than Sarka had been prepared for. There was such a diversity of sights, sounds, and people that Sarka did not know what to look at first. She drank in each new thing, no matter how mundane. The docks bustled with hurried workers carrying crates, barrels, and sacks to and fro on their burly shoulders. Carts pulled by mules weaved through the crush of people. Sarka narrowly avoided collision more than once, clutching her satchel of precious thread to her chest as she made her way on alone.

The vast stone wall surrounding Deynaport was breached only by a set of huge, iron-clad doors. Sarka crossed through these and onto a cobbled street, which stretched straight onward, lined with stalls and shops. Just looking around exhausted her. She stood like a tree in the stream of humanity with a never-ending current of people brushing past her, some of them glancing in startled interest at her scarred face.

But Sarka had grown quickly accustomed to her ugliness. The stares of strangers did not provoke her so much as tire her even further.

On either side of her, the oppressive facades of buildings rose on either side of the street, two or three stories high and built in rows with no space between them. The brick and wooden walls stretched up to an arching blue sky touched here and there with wisps of white cloud. Large, painted signs hung above some of the doors. Sarka could barely read the words on them and did not understand half of what she could. On the higher levels, boxes full of green plants and blooming flowers hung from the glass-paned windows.

All of this struck Sarka as bewildering largesse. Feeling directionless and overwhelmed, she closed her eyes. You have come too far to lose your way now, Sarka, she said to herself.

When she opened her eyes again, Sarka saw a familiar face, eerily calm and still, peering at her from the shadows of an alley. The sight of Tayo's face registered with a drop in her stomach and an urgent, panicked thud of her heart. She hadn't seen him since the night he had nearly killed her. Had she thought to be free of him now that she had made land in Galdren?

In the light, Sarka could see the bricks of the wall through his pale face, and he radiated a cold aura. But his eyes, for the first time, were dark and calm, as if the fire in him had burned down to embers.

"Tayo," Sarka whispered. People crossed to and fro between them.

You have crossed the sea. I allowed it. You must keep your promise to me, Absconder. The words echoed in Sarka's mind, both plaintive and threatening.

"I will. But I can do little of worth without a place to sleep. You must give me time." The worry that she might once again go hungry gnawed at her, her primary focus. Her obligation to herself outweighed her obligation to him. Freeing Tayo could wait-must wait-until she had secured her own survival. Sarka resented him for tormenting her, and any threads of pity she had mustered the night she promised him help had been cut.

Her debt to him was for self-preservation alone, and his mercy would mean nothing if she starved.

Daylit reality flickered before her eyes, and Tayo was gone. Though she did not see him, she heard his voice: Do not forget, or I will bring a dozen of my brothers to take you. We will each bear a shard of your soul back to the ashlands.

She turned her head to look up and down the street; the pedestrians around her seemed not to have noticed anything amiss. She began to walk in search of a tailor's shop, her head swimming with sensory assault: sight, sounds, smells.

A man trundled down the side of the street, pushing a cart. Sarka hailed him. "Excuse me, sir."

"Deyna's blessing upon you. Hot roll?" He lifted the lid of a heavy iron trough on his cart, revealing a jumble of steaming sweet rolls. At the same time, he took in Sarka's bedraggled appearance with a doubtful eye, sensing, perhaps, that she did not have the coin to pay for the food.