She turned to Kevin, reaching for his sleeve — maybe staying outside wasn’t so crazy after all — when someone shouted from the back of the room.
“Close the door! You want to kill us all?!”
It was followed by gales of drunken laughter. Glenn took a step back and the door slammed shut behind her. She expected to see the same fear that she felt on Kevin’s face, but he was already striding deeper into the room toward the bar, searching through the faces as he went.
Glenn’s head spun, overwhelmed, as she made her way through the crowds. Before she knew it, they were standing near a bearish-looking man with red hair and an enormous handlebar mustache, pouring something frothy and amber into two metal tankards from a ceramic pitcher.
“Excuse me,” Kevin called. “Is this Armstrong?”
The bartender wiped up a spill. “I’ve got one room,” he said. “It’s thirty-five. Comes with dinner. Kappie stew and beet root. You have money?”
Kevin fumbled with the coins, dropping a spread onto the bar.
The barman picked through them, pocketed some, and pushed a few coins back.
“Room’s upstairs at the end of the hall.” He raised his eyebrows over to their left. “Table’s over there. Maggie will bring you something.”
Glenn stepped toward the table but then realized that Kevin was still at the bar with his hands on the shoddy wood, the barman looking down at him.
“You need something else?” the barman asked.
Kevin seemed eager to say something, but when he saw Glenn
was still standing behind him, he quickly said no, and fled.
“What was that?” Glenn asked.
“Nothing,” he said, taking her arm and pushing her along. “Come on.”
Kevin dropped the pack against the wall and fell into a wooden chair at the table. Glenn sat across from him. Sitting was a miracle.
And it was such a relief to be out of the cold with the promise of food on the way that her spirits buoyed despite Kevin’s strange behavior.
Moments later a barmaid dropped two plates and two of the metal tankards down in front of them and scuttled off. The plate was covered with a slop of reddish brown, a stew composed of thick-cut potatoes, carrots, and what Glenn was pretty sure were hunks of meat. She realized how hungry she was as the stew’s smoky tang wafted up to her, but a sick lump weighed in her stomach at the thought of it.
“What’s the matter?” Kevin asked.
“There’s … meat in here.”
Kevin pushed his spoon through the stew. “So?”
Glenn stared across the table. Land in the Colloquium was at such a premium that raising animals for meat was almost impossible.
“I’ve never eaten meat before,” she said. “And neither have you.”
Kevin dug into the mess on his plate and lifted a dripping
spoonful. Glenn winced as he shoved the food into his mouth and chewed. His eyebrows lowered, puzzled, as his jaws worked at it.
“How is it?”
Kevin chewed a while longer, then swallowed it with effort.
“Tough,” he said. “And kind of, I don’t know, bloody-tasting?”
Glenn’s stomach turned. “Uck.”
Kevin’s face darkened, the muscles of his jaw tensed. He shook his head. “We probably still have a lot of walking to do,” he said as he dug in. “Who knows when we’ll eat next. Don’t see how we can be choosy.”
Glenn poked through the stew. The bloody wildness of it rose to her nostrils. Glenn pushed the bits of meat and gristle to the side of the plate and ate the vegetables and broth as quickly as she could, washing it down with gulps from her tankard.
“So, what do we do next?”
“Stay the night,” Glenn said. “What else would we do?”
“And tomorrow?”
“Wait for Aamon and then go.”
“And if he doesn’t come?”
Glenn’s spoon hovered over the mess in front of her. She saw the horde of men rushing toward them. Aamon’s wounds.
“He’ll come,” she said.
“But — ”
“If he’s not here in the morning, we keep going to Bethany. He’ll find us there. Then we destroy the bracelet and go home.”
Glenn glared until Kevin looked away. He pushed the food
around his plate, then turned to watch the room behind them. When he was done, he leaned across the table toward Glenn.
“Maybe Opal can help you,” he said. “She told me what the
bracelet could do to the Magistra. Maybe she’s right, maybe you could use it to help people instead of — ”
“Kevin.”
“You saw what Garen Tom did to that boy. He did that because of her. The Magistra. And Opal’s son and his friends. That’s all because of her.”
“I know that.”
“If we had a way to stop her — ”
“I said no!”
A ripple of quiet went through the room around them. Kevin
stared hard at her, his lips a thin line. Finally he shook his head and attacked what was left of his food.
Glenn pushed her plate away to get rid of the smell of flesh as the musicians started up another song, this one even louder and faster than the first. When Kevin had cleaned the plate, he sat back in his chair with his arms crossed, a smear of the bloody stew on his chin.
The waitress appeared at their table. “Can I get you anything else, dears?”
“Sure,” Glenn answered, getting up from the table. “Slaughter whatever you have in the kitchen and toss it on his plate. Don’t even bother to cook it.”
Glenn left without a backward look and trundled up rickety stairs to the second floor. Her fingers fumbled along the walls, automatically searching for a light switch. She pulled them back with a frustrated grunt and kept going.
The landing she came to was dimly lit with candles placed in little alcoves along the walls. Glenn snatched one up, hissing as a molten bit of wax singed her fingers, and made her way through the smoky murk to the only open door she could find.
The glow from her candle illuminated a mostly bare room with just a window and a small wood-frame bed and table. Glenn lit a few other candles she found and sat on the mattress. It crunched beneath her, releasing a musty, haylike smell. The noise from downstairs came up through the floorboards, garbled but no softer.
Glenn longed for a shower. She was nearly entombed in sweat, river water, and dirt. Her muscles ached. All she needed was hot water and soap and steam to make them unfold. How did people live like this?
She pulled off her coat and fell back onto the bed, looking up at the plain wood of the ceiling. She tried to see galaxies of stars in the swirl of the wood’s grain, planets in its knots, but the image wouldn’t hold. She longed for the feel of Hopkins nestled beside her, his small body vibrating as he purred, but thinking of him only brought to mind Aamon’s face and a fresh stab of remorse.
“Hey.”
Glenn bolted upright. A man was standing in the open door, a dark figure illuminated in the candlelight. It took a moment for Glenn to realize it was Kevin. “Oh,” he said, leaning back into the hall.
