The Price {Completed}

Chapter Thirty-Three

Another week passed, and I still heard nothing of Ferdinand. Each day that Rachel and I spent walking from the headquarters to the dumping grounds within the city was a day that I silently prayed would see his return. As I slowly grew more used to shoving bodies around and fishing through their pockets for valuables, I tried to remember that Ferdinand had escaped so many times before. His home, his old company, and then the Lennox Company with me in tow. Even more than that, though, he always came back to me. I held tightly to that piece of truth, backed by all those times he showed up by my side when he should have been far away. Why would now be any different?

On a particular day, the Vigilant Men sent Rachel and I back out to the edge of the fighting. It had been pushed back a few streets since our first excursion, and the blockades were more haphazard than before. Men huddled in the mud and grime, wiping their eyes to try and dispel the haunted exhaustion that ran rampant like a plague through their ranks. A list drizzle had graced us all, mucking up the roads and soaking through woolen jackets to freeze the bones of anyone unlucky enough to be outdoors. Rachel and I were fortunate enough that we'd found a few oiled cloth jackets on a group of corpses the day before, and rather than turn in all of them, Rachel had spirited two into a corner to be retrieved at a later date. She justified it by saying it would help the Cause by making us more productive, but I suspected it had more to do with the fact that she absolutely hated the cold and wet, and didn't want to ruin her nice coat in the drizzle.

As I pulled a wad of useless bank notes out a man's pocket, Rachel stood at the entrance to the dead-end alley and stared at the barricade only a few hundred feet away.

"We should hurry up," she said, not taking her eyes off the men. "I think the storm is going to get worse."

"It's not really a storm now," I said, flipping through the bank notes to make sure no loose change had gotten stuck in their folds. My fingers stopped on a glossy piece of paper, and when I glanced at it two smiling and youthful faces gazed up at me. My stomach sank and I quickly balled up the photograph and stuffed it back into the man's pocket... Only, I wasn't sure it was even the man I'd originally gotten the photograph from. I quickly moved on, going to the opposite end of the pile of bodies and starting a new batch.

"Maybe we should turn in these jackets," Rachel said, running her palm along the oiled surface. "The soldiers will probably need them soon, if the weather gets any worse."

"It's fine by me," I muttered, pocketing a handful of gold gathered from five bodies. "I don't mind getting a bit wet." Even if it meant shivering and going numb and not being able to concentrate. I still felt strange wearing clothes we'd stripped from days old bodies.

Rachel's lips flattened, but then she pushed away from the wall she'd been leaning on and came to help me finish up with the scrounging. Only ten minutes later and we were done. Our pockets jangled as we picked our way out. My hands were speckled with dried blood and refuse, and I tried not breath through my nose as I held my hands at my sides. Rachel sauntered through the streets as if she was dressed in diamonds and velvet. The men at the barricades glanced up as we passed opposite them on the street. A few grinned, but most watched us with an idle emptiness. Water dripped from their hair and noses, and none bothered to try and shelter themselves from the drizzle any longer. They sat, mud splattered and shivering, behind the wooden wall, waiting for the sound of gunshots that told them the kings' men had returned.

Rachel and I passed into an alley and back out to one of the main roads. The barricade at the entrance was around a corner, and we saw none of the men who manned it. I walked forward, headed in the direction we'd taken a few hours earlier to arrive here, but Rachel's eye was caught by a group of women standing in a doorway across the way.