Jet and Becca came up to the cabin near dark.
Ember was on the porch, at the table, with Noel. Noel had not spoken since the forest path. He sat with his hands folded and his eyes somewhere across the clearing, and she had run out of ways to talk to a man who gave nothing back, so the footsteps on the path came as a mercy.
Jet climbed the steps. “Ember. This is Becca.”
“Hello.” Ember stood. “It’s nice to—”
“Likewise.” Becca was already past her and pulling the door open. “I’m going to sleep. Don’t wake me for dinner.”
The door shut.
Ember stood there with her hand half-raised.
“It’s not personal,” Jet said. “She’s slow to warm. Give her time.” He held the door for her. “Come in.”
The kitchen was a table, a stove, and not much past that. Noel stayed out on the porch.
Jet nodded at the satchel on her shoulder. “That everything you brought?”
She looked at it. “Clothes. A few odds and ends. That’s all.”
“That’s fine. We’re for the capital soon — you’ll get what you need there. The group pays.”
“I can’t let you—”
“No arguments.” He said it lightly, but it closed the subject anyway. “We did it for every one of them. Call it a signing bonus.”
She sat down with nothing to say to that. It had been a long time since anyone handed her anything without a price waiting behind it, and she did not know where to put the feeling.
He showed her the cabin. It did not take long. Two wings off a common room — the men’s, a few bunks; the women’s, left for later now that Becca had claimed it for sleep. The kitchen. The common room itself, which had books left open on every flat surface, a chess game abandoned halfway, and the settled clutter of people who had better things to do than tidy. Her hands wanted to start on it. She kept them where they were.
“Where’s Noel?” she asked, when they came back out front and the porch was empty.
“The lake, most likely.”
He took her around the cabin and down a path through the trees, and the trees opened on water. The sun was going down into it. The light broke apart across the surface in colors she had no names for, and for a moment she forgot to be afraid of anything at all.
Noel sat at the edge of it, a flask in one hand, looking at the far shore.
“He comes out here,” Jet said. “It settles him. Sleeps out here most nights, too.” He set his hands on his hips. “Best to leave him alone when he gets like this.”
They left him.
Back in the front yard Jet showed her the rest with a sweep of his arm — a training circle worn bald into the dirt, a hammock, a fire pit ringed with chairs. “That’s the lot.” Then his eyes went wide, like he’d forgotten something, and he pointed at the wall of trees standing around the clearing. They went up higher than seemed reasonable.
“Those woods have things living in them. Bad ones. Keep to the paths and they’ll mostly leave you be, but don’t go in alone. Take one of the adults — me, Noel, Becca, or Homer.”
“Who’s Homer?”
“You’ll meet him.” Jet yawned. The day was catching up with him. “Anything else?”
She looked at the cabin. “It’s a nice place. How long have you had it?”
“Six years, near enough.” He scratched his head. “I trained under the man who owned it. When he started thinking about packing it in, he sold it to me cheap. He’s down in the capital now.” He looked at the place again, and something almost shy went over his face. “It is nice, isn’t it.”
“It’s the nicest place I’ve ever stood in.”
He smiled at that. A real one — not the working smile, one she hadn’t been shown yet. He opened the door. “Come on. We’ll wait for the others inside. I’ll put on tea.”
* * *
They sat at the table with the tea and watched the light go out of the sky. She asked her small questions and he answered them. Night came on properly.
A knock — and then the door swung open before anyone could go to it, and a boy came through at a run. Black hair, straight, in his eyes. Clothes patched at the knees and elbows. A grin that took up most of his face. Younger than her, she’d have bet on it.
“Hey, Jet!” Then he saw Ember and stopped dead. “Whoa. Who’re you?”
“This is Ember. She’s joining us.” Jet leaned to see past him. “Where’s the rest, Ben?”
“Coming. They were slow, so I ran on ahead.”
Footsteps crossed the porch. A girl came in around Ember’s age, a shade taller maybe, a black braid down to her waist and an oversized gray poncho with the hood pushed back off it. A pair of worn goggles sat at her throat. Her eyes were up and curious until they found Ember, and then they went to the floor.
“Hey, Liz.” Jet’s voice gentled. “How’d the job go?”
“It — it went fine.” She got half a glance at Ember and pulled it back. Breathed. Tried again. “Who’s this?”
“Ember. She’s with us now.”
“Oh.” A small, careful smile. “Hello.”
“Hello, Liz. It’s good to meet you.”
Liz nodded, and then nodded again, as if she worried the first one hadn’t counted. Jet watched her do it and turned to Ember. “Liz is about your age. Smartest person I’ve ever met, this one. You’ll get along.”
Liz went red to the ears. “I don’t know about smartest.” She was pleased, though, and not hiding it well. “I just read a lot.”
Ember was about to answer when the third tread came up the porch. Heavier than the other two. The boards spoke under it.
The man who filled the doorway had to fold himself to get through. Standing straight he’d have cleared the frame by a foot. His hood was up and she couldn’t find his face, and her breath caught somewhere under her ribs. Then he turned into the candlelight and she saw it.
A bunny mask. Bright, festive, the kind painted for a children’s fair.
A laugh got out of her before she could stop it.
“Homer, look!” Ben pointed at her. “A new person!”
“Oh.” Homer bent down to her level, slow, and she swallowed as he came. Seven feet at least, and his left arm was metal from the shoulder to the tips of the fingers — plated, heavy, catching the candlelight. But the eyes behind the mask were not what the rest of him promised. They were kind. “Hello, new person.”
His voice came out deep and somehow warm, the last thing she’d have guessed at from all that iron. She noticed she had stopped being frightened.
“I’m Ember. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Homer. And likewise, little lady.” He looked over her head at Jet. “I didn’t know we were taking on someone new.”
“Neither did I.” Jet leaned back and stretched. “But things rarely go the way I draw them up. You’ve noticed, I’m sure.”
Homer’s laugh filled the room. “That I have.” He came back to Ember. “I’ll look forward to knowing you. We’re a strange little team— though you’ll have worked that out by now.” He gestured down the length of himself, mask and all.
She laughed again.
“Liz said the job went all right?” Jet said.
“It did. Escort work, nothing in it.” Homer tossed a small purse across the room and Jet caught it. “Which means—”
“Which means thin pay.” Jet weighed it in his palm without opening it. “Three silver?”
“Three silver.” Homer rolled the metal shoulder. “But I’ve a line on another. Escort job, a party headed for the capital. We’re going that way regardless. May as well take the coin.”
“Good hunting.” Jet drank off the last of his tea and yawned into the back of his hand. “It’s late. If we’re for the capital in the morning, we should turn in early.” To Ember: “Liz’ll show you a bed and lend you clothes until we sort you out properly.” To Liz: “That all right?”
“Sure!”
Ben yawned, loud and for an audience, and turned to Homer. “Right. Let’s hit the hay. I’m fatigued.” He cut Homer a sideways look on the last word.
“Ooh.” Homer laid the heavy hand on the boy’s shoulder and turned him toward the men’s wing. “Nice word.”
Their voices carried back down the hall.
“That new girl’s real pretty, huh.”
“You’ll be kind to her, Ben.” Homer, lower now. “It’s a hard thing, being somewhere new.”
“I know, I know.”
The door to the men’s wing shut on the both of them.
Jet looked at the two girls. “Ben’s a good kid. Bit slow. But it’s the good kind of slow— he’ll be a friend to you.” He stood. “Goodnight.”
Ember found she was smiling. “All right.”
“Come on,” Liz said. “I’ll show you the bed.”
* * *
The women’s wing was dark but for the window. Becca was a shape on a mattress at the far end, already under. Liz’s bed and Ember’s stood a few feet apart. They changed in the dark and got in.
“Um.” Liz’s voice, after a stretch of quiet. Ember turned her head. “I know it’s a lot. All of it, at once. If you’ve got questions, I don’t mind them.”
She was working so hard at being kind that it was almost difficult to watch. “Thanks, Liz. It is a lot.” Ember let herself think a moment. “How long have you been here?”
“Half a year. I was the newest one. Until you.”
“Any advice? I don’t know what I’ve got to give anyone.”
Liz was quiet a beat. “I didn’t either, when I came. But Jet’s good at it — he finds the thing a person’s for, even when they can’t see it in themselves. I wouldn’t fret. Look for ways to be useful and they’ll turn up.”
“Okay.” Ember stopped there. There was another question under it, and it scared her, and she asked it anyway. “Can I ask you something else?”
“Sure.”
She went at it carefully. “Before Jet brought me here, I watched him and Noel fight some soldiers. One of them put a knife in Noel’s back. I saw him go down. And a minute later he was on his feet like nothing had touched him.” She kept her eyes on the dark ceiling. “I don’t understand how that’s possible.”
For a long while Liz didn’t say anything.
When she did, her voice had gone small. “Everyone here is carrying something they’d rather not. A past.” A breath. “I’ve watched Noel take wounds that would kill any of us and stand up after. More than once. More than you’d believe if I sat here and listed them.” A pause. “I’ve wanted to ask him what he is since the day I arrived. But to ask, I’d have to tell him about me. And I can’t do that. So I don’t ask.”
Ember said nothing.
“What I’ve got is this much. He’s stubborn. He drinks like it’s owed to him. He and Jet built this group between the two of them. And he doesn’t die.” Liz turned her head on the pillow. “Maybe you understand that. Carrying a thing you won’t put words to.”
“I do.” Ember held the ceiling. “There’s a lot I don’t say.”
“I thought as much.” Liz turned back to the ceiling. “Jet draws people like that. Makes you wonder what set him on the road himself. You never see one of the Ret traveling alone — but he does, and he laughs off anyone who asks him why.” She was quiet. “He lights right up when one of us comes near. Which is how you come to notice how far down he goes when he thinks nobody’s watching—”
She stopped.
She turned, all of her this time, to face Ember.
“I don’t do this. Talk like this. Not with someone I’ve only known for an evening.”
Ember turned to her, warm-faced, and started to say sorry.
“Don’t.” Liz was smiling at her in the dark. She rolled onto her back. “It’s nice.”
The Silent Beggar's Anthology 