His father returned to the hut after dark.
Colin sat before the fire. His mother sat on one of the sleeping pallets, Colin’s torn shirt in her lap, her needle and thread flashing in the light as she mended it. A pile of assorted clothes sat next to her: shirts and breeches and linens from a few of the other members of Lean-to that also needed repair.
His parents looked at each other a moment after his father ducked through the entrance, his mother pausing in her work. Then Tom’s gaze fell on Colin.
He moved toward the fire, reached forward to ruffle Colin’s hair, but Colin ducked his head and shifted out of the way.
“Colin, come here.”
When Colin didn’t move, his father squatted down next to him by the fire with a grunt and held out his hand. “I have something for you.”
He still hadn’t forgiven his father, but he couldn’t help himself. He looked, then frowned.
Tom held what appeared to be a wadded up ball of string.
“What is it?”
His father grinned. “Take it.”
As Colin pulled it from his father’s hand, Tom settled down beside him. Unraveling the loose ends of the straps, Colin realized it wasn’t string, but leather. In its center, a wide rectangular piece was wrapped around a knotted ball. The straps were tied to the rectangular piece through slits. One of the straps had ties on the end; the other ended in the knotted ball.
“It’s a sling,” his father explained after making himself comfortable. “I made it this afternoon.”
“You made him a sling?” his mother asked sharply. “What for?”
“So he can protect himself,” his father growled. Then he drew in a shuddering breath and said more calmly, “So he can defend himself from Walter and his gang.”
His mother’s silence spoke volumes.
“Ana, he needs something he can use to protect himself from those bastards. He needs to be able to fight back.”
“He shouldn’t need to fight back at all.”
“No, he shouldn’t. But I don’t think anyone in Portstown, least of all the Proprietor, is going to do anything about it. Walter’s the Proprietor’s son for God’s sakes! Colin’s almost twelve. I think he can handle a sling. I had one when I was his age. Unless you’d rather I give him a knife to defend himself with?”
His mother’s eyes narrowed. “No. I don’t want Colin running around with a knife.”
“Then the sling will have to do.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “I can’t do anything about finding work, not at the moment. At least let me try to fix this.”
Colin thought his mother would argue more, but she only closed her eyes and shook her head before returning to her mending.
Tom breathed a sigh of relief, barely audible, and the tension in his shoulders eased. He turned to Colin and smiled. The first real smile Colin had seen on his face in months.
“Tomorrow morning, I’ll take you out to the plains, and we’ll see if I can remember how to use it,” he said.
Colin barely slept that night and not because his parents argued in hushed voices from their sleeping pallet not ten paces away, his mother fretting, his father trying to calm her. He curled up in his own pallet, back toward them, the sling clutched in one hand, a tight grin on his face.
In the morning, he was dressed and ready before either of his parents. The bacon fried too slowly, the fire burned too cold, and time dragged, until finally his mother snapped, “Colin, settle down and stop pacing! Your father will take you out as soon as he’s finished breakfast. Now, go fill this pot with water before I strangle you!”
Colin froze, then snatched the pot from his mother’s hands and tore out of the hut, his mother mumbling, “Holy Diermani preserve us from overexcited children.”
“He’s almost of age, Ana. He’s not a child anymore.”
Colin didn’t hear his mother’s response, already racing through the paths between tents and shanties toward one of the numerous streams that drained down toward the port. He dodged an old woman as she dumped dirty water into his path, leaped over a barking dog as the woman shouted something unintelligible after him, rounded the last corner before the stream And plowed into a girl headed in the other direction.
They tumbled to the ground in a mess of arms and legs, buckets and water. Bruises that Colin had forgotten since last night awoke as he struck the ground, and the girl’s elbow caught him in the cheek as they landed, the girl crying out. Frigid water sluiced down Colin’s shirt from one of the girl’s buckets, and for a moment Colin couldn’t breathe.
Then he gasped, sucked in a harsh breath and rolled to the side, onto his stomach.
“What in Diermani’s eight bloody hells were you doing?” the girl shrieked. “And look what you’ve done. I just cleaned these buckets!”
Colin heard feet stamping, heard the rattle of a bucket’s handle, and then a sudden pause.
“Oh, God.” Someone dropped to the dirt beside him and rolled him over. “Are you hurt? You aren’t hurt, are you?”
Colin sucked in another breath and winced at the feeling of his shirt plastered to his chest with mud.
“My mother’s going to kill me,” he muttered.
The girl-slightly taller than him, a year or two older, with short wild brown hair and freckles across her nose-leaned back onto her heels and glared down at him with hard green eyes. “She should, and you’d deserve it, tearing around here like that.” Her frown deepened. “You’re Colin, the carpenter’s son, aren’t you?”
He coughed and sat upright. “Yes.” He took a closer look at the girl. “Who are you?”
She snorted. “Karen. I was on the Merry Weather.” Her voice broke, filled with dark inflections. She couldn’t hold his gaze, her eyes dropping, darting down and away. More than half the passengers on the Merry Weather had died of some kind of wasting sickness on the voyage across the Arduon.
A moment later, she cleared her throat. “Why is your mother going to kill you?”
Colin groaned. “Because this was my last clean shirt.”
“That’s easy to fix. Take it off.”
Colin hesitated, and Karen rolled her eyes.
“Fine, don’t take it off. Let your mother see you like that.” She scrambled back to her feet, bucket in one hand, and headed toward the stream.
“Wait!” Colin said, grabbing his pot and following her. She’d already retrieved her other bucket and knelt by the stream, one bucket in the water, the second beside her, by the time he caught up.
She looked up at him, then extended one hand. “Well?”
He unbuttoned his shirt, fumbling a little, then handed the shirt over.
Karen gasped at the bruises across his chest and side, a few yellowed and fading, but most blue-black and purple. “How did you get those?”
Colin backed up a quick step when she reached out to touch him, already self-conscious without his shirt on. “Doesn’t matter.”
She gave him a skeptical look but didn’t say anything, turning back to the stream. She plunged his shirt into the water. “This shouldn’t be too hard to clean, since the mud is fresh.” She began scrubbing the shirt vigorously.
Colin watched her from behind. A breeze gusted from the ocean and all of the little hairs on his arms prickled and stood on end. He shivered.
Karen held up the shirt, frowned at it, then scrubbed it again before declaring it acceptable.
“It’s not perfect,” she said, holding it out to him, “but it should do.” She sluiced out her own buckets, then filled them with water. When she turned back, she added, “You should really learn to clean your own shirts though.”
Then she smiled and, buckets in hand, moved off.
Colin stood stock-still, stunned, his shirt held out before him, until the gusting breeze brought him back.
He hastily put the shirt back on, grimacing as the damp fabric stuck to his skin, then filled his pot and headed back home.
