The Thief King

23 | Porter

There was warmth at her temples. It spread, trickling through to her cheeks, bleeding into her lips and seeping down her neck. From there it unfurled like a drop of ink in water. Tendrils raced down her limbs, bringing life and awareness to her toes and fingers. It raced towards her center, to her stomach, to her lungs and heart and suddenly, she remembered.

Hannah sat up so fast her world tilted. Hands clasped at her shoulders and voices buzzed in her ears, their words unintelligible. Hannah pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. She felt sick. Nausea was forcing her body to revolt against her, but it had no weapons. She was empty.

"Hannah," a familiar voice said in her ear. "Hannah lie back down. You hear me?"

"Porter?" she croaked.

"Yes, my dear, now please lie down." Gentle hands pressed her down, Hannah obeyed only because she didn't have the strength to do anything else.

"Joey?"

"He is here. Warming up some broth in the kitchen but safe." Porter sounded annoyed.

"Stone?"

"What's that, dear? What about a stone?"

Hannah opened her eyes. The candle light was low and flickering, and easy to adapt to. She could smell the boiled cabbages and rat poison that gave Porter's cathedral its repugnant stench. All his students would joke about how they thought Porter lived with the smell. One of Hannah's favourite guesses was that Porter bathed in cabbage broth and ate rat poison, and so found it rather delightful.

"I don't feel like eating anything."

"I'm afraid I am giving you no choice, my dear. It's either broth or Sera."

"No!" Hannah's hands gripped at priest's knobby wrists. "Please don't tell her. She'll...she'll only be worried."

"I know," the priest's pock-marked face came into view, his lips turned down at the corners—more from age than upset. His eyes drooped at the corners, and his nose was thin and sharp. It was like looking at a spotted bird. "Which is precisely why I shall have to inform her about your nightly activities. What were you doing out so late?"

Hannah swallowed. Had Joey said anything? Was Porter only asking questions so as to prove whatever tale Joey had spun false? The next time they went out, they would have to think up a backup story. "My head," Hannah moaned, pressing her palms to her ears. "Everything is so loud."

Porter clucked his tongue and shook his head. "You think the two of you's silence makes you seem any less innocent?"

So Joey had said nothing. "We weren't doing anything..." she had to choose her words very carefully if she were to persuade Porter to keep silent. "...ungodly."

"And in the eyes of a ten–"

"Almost eleven."

Porter narrowed his eyes. "And in the eyes of a young girl, such as yourself, what classifies as ungodly?"

"You know, all that stuff you go on about. Thieving and the like."

Where was Bayden with that broth? And what happened to Stone? Had he returned for Bayden? Bayden...

"And if you were not committing such sins, what were you doing at the crack of dawn when all the usual riffraff and ragamuffins commit their heinous crimes of sin and indulgence?"

Hannah made a sound to respond, but it formed no word. "We..."

A fluffy brow arched. "No words to describe your mischief? Would Sera bring more light to the situation? I have an inkling to find out, don't you?"