Colin settled down next to his mother, away from the table where his father, Paul, Sam, and Shay sat on various crates and stools, a game of Crook and Row set out before them. Sam glared at his cards, then threw one before answering, Shay snorting as he picked up the tossed card.
“The Proprietor has banned anyone from Lean-to from the docks. We can no longer seek work there or at the warehouses. It’s as if we have the plague!”
“He can’t do that.”
“Oh, he didn’t officially ‘ban’ us,” Paul said, his words slurred with more than derision. “No, no, he’s too crafty for that.”
Shay played a stretch of four and discarded. “The bastard has sent out the Armory, men just over from Andover, sent by the Family. They’ve started patrolling the docks.”
“I don’t understand it,” Ana said, knife slicing through the first rabbit with rough jerks as she began gutting and cleaning it. She motioned for Colin to help her. “He should want to have refugees flooding the town. He could double its size within months. There’d be more land producing goods, more tradesmen producing wares. Trade would increase. He’d be wallowing in the profits!”
“Portstown has already doubled in size,” his father said, as he continued with his own move. “There’s a new mill along the river, at least five new merchant houses, two taverns, a granary. But none of that matters. He doesn’t need profit, he’s already wallowing in it.”
“Then what’s he looking for?” Paul asked.
“Status.”
Everyone at the table turned toward him. Sam frowned. “What do you mean?”
Colin’s father paused, caught their intent looks, then set his cards down. “It’s all political. I think Sartori sees Portstown as his path into the Court. Look at what he’s done with the land since we arrived. He’s parceled it out to members of various Families in Andover, to their lesser sons, to those allied strongly with the Carrente Doms and their immediate successors. Last week, he awarded a huge chunk of land to the east to the third son of Dom Umberto, a thousand acres of arable farmland at least.”
Paul choked on his ale. “Umberto is part of the Scarrelli Family!”
His father nodded, anger touching his eyes. “Sartori is currying favor with his allies and the Family trading companies, using the land as his collateral. In exchange, he’s gaining influence in the Court. That’s where the Armory is coming from. His allies are bringing them in to protect their interests here in Portstown. He’s never going to award the land to any of us, because we don’t have anything that he needs. We can’t help him take advantage of the Feud in Andover. Look at all of us here in Lean-to! We’re either bonded to one of the rival Families of the Carrentes, or we’re miscreants, troublemakers, or criminals shipped here from Andover.”
Colin’s mother growled, “We came here to escape the Feud.”
No one responded. Rain began pounding on the roof of the hut, leaking through near the covered hole where the smoke from the fire could escape. Colin’s mother shook her head and set a pot under the drip before returning to the carcasses. They’d finished the two rabbits, had begun working on the prairie dog.
As Colin began cutting it open, careful not to damage the hide, since his mother could use the pelt, he said into the silence, “I saw it.”
All of the men turned toward Colin. The knife slipped in his hand, narrowly missing his palm.
“What did you see?” Shay asked.
Colin forced his hands to stop trembling. “I saw the farm, the one given to Umberto’s son. On my way back from the plains.”
His mother gasped as she took the prairie dog and knife from him. “You were out that far into the plains? I told you to stay close. We don’t know what’s out there!”
“Ana,” his father said, and his mother fell silent with a glower. His father didn’t notice, his attention on Colin. “What have they done so far?”
Colin glanced toward Sam and Paul, toward Shay, who’d shifted forward. He didn’t like the darkness in their eyes, the intensity, especially in Shay’s. Their cards had been forgotten. And the ale.
Thunder growled overhead as Colin said, “They’ve plowed at least two fields. And the garden.”
“What about the house?” Sam asked. “The barn?”
And suddenly Colin understood. They were carpenters and masons and smiths. They could have been hired to help raise the barn, to help build the house.
But they hadn’t been. Just as they hadn’t been hired to help with the new buildings in Portstown, the mill or the granary.
He swallowed against the sourness in his stomach, against the faint taste of bile in the back of his throat, and said, “The barn is already up. The house isn’t finished, but-”
“But it’s been started,” his father finished for him as all four of them slumped back into their chairs.
Shay slammed his cards down onto the table. “Goddamned bloody cursed motherf-”
“Shay Jones!” his mother barked, and Shay leaped to his feet.
“What!” he spat, face livid. “I can’t swear? The goddamned Proprietor is sucking our lives away- purposefully!-and I can’t bloody curse? What’s going to happen? Is the blessed Diermani going to strike me dead where I stand? Is He going to send lightning to crisp me into ash? Because at this point I’d bloody well welcome it!”
“Shay,” Colin’s father said, and then repeated more harshly. “Shay! Sit down!”
Shay collapsed back into his seat, but the rage on his face didn’t change. “What did we cross the bloody Arduon for? Not for this.” He motioned toward the rest of the hut, toward all of Lean-to. “Not to live in a shack, begging for menial work on the docks. Not scouring the beaches for crabs or scavenging the plains for rodents, just to eat.” Leaning forward, he hissed, “I didn’t give up an apprenticeship with one of the finest guilds in Andover for this. Something has got to change or, Diermani is my witness, I’ll make it change.”
He hesitated, eyes locked on Tom, then shoved back from the table, the crate he’d been sitting on tilting and tumbling to the ground. He’d ducked out into the storm, the shutter thrown aside, before anyone had even drawn a breath.
No one moved; Sam and Paul sat with stunned looks on their faces, cards held before them. Thunder rumbled.
Then Ana set her butchering knife down and wiped her hands on an already bloody cloth. “Well,” she said. “I’d say Shay’s a little… angry.”
“He’s not the only one,” Sam said, tossing his cards into the center of the table.
Ana hesitated at the warning in Sam’s voice, then moved toward the entrance to the hut to replace the shutter.
“A large group of people in Lean-to have gotten tired of waiting,” Colin’s father said.
“Some of them have already left,” Sam added. “The Havensworths gave up and returned to Andover. They used the last of their money for passage. The Colts and the Ferruses both took ship to other settlements along the coast.”
“The Wrights packed up and headed inland, to settle their own land,” Ana said with a huff.
“And the Wrights haven’t been heard from since,” Colin’s father said meaningfully, watching his mother’s back. “I’m not a farmer, Ana. I’m a carpenter. I don’t think we’d survive long if I simply packed you and Colin up and headed off into the plains alone. And we don’t have any funds left to get passage back to Andover or even down the coast.”
After a moment, his father shifted, gaze dropping back to Sam and Paul. “But Shay is right. Sartori is doing everything he can to push us out, to force us to leave, and I’m tired of it. Tired of the restrictions, of the pressure. Of the threats that are becoming more and more overt, like the presence of the Armory. Something needs to change. Soon. If it doesn’t…”
Paul snorted. “Shay isn’t one to waste words when action will do. And he’s got plenty of followers. He’s been recruiting from the dissidents in Lean-to, the criminals who opted for the New World rather than the Armory in Andover, and there’s a lot more of them here than honest folk. There’s what? Thirty guildsmen here in Lean-to? There are four times as many of them. It could get ugly.”
Ana frowned as she returned, her eyes going to Colin. She hugged him from behind and murmured, “I don’t want you going into town, Colin. Not for the next few days.”
Colin pulled out of her embrace. “Why not?”
