The Alabaster Staff - Edward Bolme [52]
The servants later told him they had never seen someone so thin eat so much.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
By the time Kehrsyn pulled her warm, well-fed body out of the deep bronze tub (she'd insisted on eating while she bathed, for the sensation of being warm was even more delicious than the foods), it was approaching midday. The sky shone bright and clear, and ambient light reflected off the snow that clung on the rooftops. It was altogether a sapphire day.
As she left Wing's Reach, Kehrsyn saw Demok leaning against the wall, watching the crowds walk past, his eyes sharp and attentive, his brows drawn together. He stopped her as she passed.
"Know what you're doing?" he asked seriously.
"I'm burgling unto the knaves whosoever hast maked me unto burgle," she said, her voice flippant but her eyes shining with grim determination.
She started to walk away, and Demok fell into step beside her, his long gait allowing him to keep pace easily.
"Not what I meant," he said as they sloshed their way through the streets, wisps of condensation puffing away from their noses in the breeze. "Can you? Need help?"
Kehrsyn pondered before answering, "Can I trust you?"
He did not answer but held her glance, and she saw his eyes were as cool and solid as granite. About the same color, too, she noted. She pressed her lips together and nodded. Demok had a position of authority with a rich and powerful man, and she doubted anything that passed in through those eyes was ever spoken of again.
Having received an answer to her first question, she asked a second: "You're not, like, a member of the thieves' guild, right?"
"If I were, you'd be dead."
She giggled nervously, then walked along in silence for some time.
"I didn't have a good childhood," she said tentatively. It had been a long time since she'd talked about herself, but so much was new or upside-down that she felt she needed to confide in someone. "I never knew my father, and Mother didn't have a copper wedge to spend. As early as I can remember, I stole food to get enough to eat. I got real good, too, sneaking, stealing, running, hiding…" She snorted. "Acting innocent. For a while, I was innocent. It was all a game. But I remember one day my mother was showing me a new trick-I don't remember what it was-and I looked up and there were tears in her eyes. I never asked her about it, but I knew even then that she was crying because she knew it was wrong, but she was teaching me because she wanted me to live. My life was never the same, because, from then on, I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I kept on doing it anyway. As I got older, the memory of those tears made me think about stealing, how I was like a leech, taking food that belonged to other people and leaving my hunger in its place. I tried stealing from different people, but that only spread my own misery around more. I tried stealing only from a few rich people, but that made them poorer, so they had less coin to pay the poor people who worked for them. I was trapped in a life that was crushing my pride, making me hate myself for the pain I caused other people by wanting to eat. It was like I hurt people just by being alive.
"So one spring day I was sitting and watching the buds just starting to sprout out of this lichen-covered plum tree. It was so beautiful, seeing those little nubs shaped like candle flames but colored the brightest green you could ever want to see. On each one you could see the outline of all these little teeny leaves just waiting to unfold and grow. What made it even better was that it was an old, gnarled tree growing wild by the side of a cart track, all twisted and broken and rough, with knotty bark all covered with black and pale lichen. It was like a tree that had been dead for years and shriveled and burned and tossed aside, yet it had all that life inside just bursting to get out, beauty and hope splitting out at the seams all over the place.
"I decided I wanted to be that tree. I wanted a new life. I promised right then and there, swore