Soulwoven

Chapter Seven

~7~

Cole Jin woke to the hard leather poke of a boot in his ribcage and pulled his blankets above his head. He could hear the hiss of rain outside, but it was warm under the blankets, soft and warm and nice and comfor—

“Up, Cole. Now. I’ll be needing your help with the levy again.”

The boot dug into his torso just below his bottom rib, where it hurt enough to make him lose his breath. He coughed, and it was removed.

Grumbling and rubbing his side, Cole rolled out of bed and found himself staring at the stubble-covered, unshaven face of his father. His nose throbbed dully.

One of these days, he thought. One of these days I’m going to leave for good, and you’ll miss me when I do. I swear it.

His father frowned and left the bedroom, and Cole laid back on his bed and let out a heavy sigh. The thatch above him was starting to break and hang down. It would need replacing soon, and the job would probably fall to him and his brother.

On his way out the room, he noticed that Litnig’s bed was empty.

Strange, he thought. It was Eld’s Day, and that was Litnig’s day off.

Cole stepped lightly down the creaking, wooden stairs to the kitchen, grabbed a crust of day-old bread from the table, and shucked into his heaviest wool cloak. When he opened the door, he discovered that it was not just raining but pouring outside. Deep puddles had formed in the muddy expanse of the yard. The world was wet, the sky was gray, and the city looked bloody miserable.

His father was standing under the eaves smoking a pipe, and Cole passed by the fat man and into the cold, muddy world beyond without a word or a glance. The wagon was already harnessed and loaded in the middle of the yard.

Cole rolled his eyes and scuttled under a blanket in the back of it. Every time his father lost his temper, he tried to make up for it by doing things like loading the wagon before waking Cole up the next day, or opening and closing the gate to the yard on his own. But he never apologized, and he never admitted he’d been wrong, and Cole never gave him the satisfaction of acknowledging the attempts to mollify him.

The driver’s seat creaked as his father climbed into it, and then the mule snicked and snorted and the cart lurched into motion.

The wagon creaked through a city muffled by more than just the weather. Usually, when it rained all talk was of the level of the Eldwater, of how bad flooding had gotten in the slums or how likely it was to spread. But the people Cole rolled past were speaking of other things. One man’s family had shared an unspeakable nightmare. Someone else’s dog had gone mad. A third man’s three-year-old son had been crying since the middle of the night.

Cole sunk deeper into the cart and tried to forget the eyes of a dragon and the shearing feeling he’d woken up with in his chest. Tried to forget his brother’s pale and shaken face and the slaughter at the Old Temple.

So many people dead, he thought, and they’re worried about nightmares. A box poked into his back, and he shoved it roughly aside. And where the hell is Litnig?

Cole’s brother usually slept in on his days off, and it worried Cole more than he wanted to admit that Litnig was out of the house so early. The city was on edge, and his brother wasn’t always quick to pick up on that.

Cole hoped he wasn’t getting into any trouble.

The wagon headed south along a roaring Eldwater that was already only a few feet below its embankments. The mule pulled. The wagon creaked. Two-story wooden houses and shops passed by, blurry shadows in the rain.