Shadows of the Scriptures

TWENTY-FOUR: The Great Small Disaster

The woman with the pale hair looked out the window at the comet in the sky. It was unusually dark up there for an early afternoon.

“Nayari!” A hoarse voice. Gerwin’s voice. “What are you doing, feeding bloody beasts of Inira? Gentlemen are starving out here!”

“Coming!” Nayari unfastened her eyes off of the comet, scrubbed bacon off the skillet, bustled out of the kitchen and into the restaurant’s main hall.

There were no gentlemen rather a single gentleman seated at a table near the taproom. At least he looked gentle enough. Certainly not starving. He was the same man that had been coming to the Peacock’s Feather every day for the past couple maes. Ordered the same meal every time, too — scrambled eggs and bacon burnt black. Demanded they be brought to him by the same girl on top. Said he liked her pale hair. Said he liked watching them bounce as she walked away from him, almost as much as when she walked towards him.

Nayari didn’t mind. He tipped her well.

“Thank you, sweet woman,” said he to her as she placed his meal down on the table to his front. His eyes were the color of sand, and not once did they stray towards the meal. He kept them fixed on her.

“No problem, mister.” She started to turn around when her hand was grabbed.

“You look especially beautiful this afternoon.” His voice as deep and rich as his pockets seemed to be. His grip as strong as a shackle.

Nayari blushed secretly. Exactly how she managed this was a mystery even to herself.

He pushed a coin into her hand, then let go of it.

“Thank you,” she whispered as she scurried back into the kitchen, heart fluttering in her chest, butterflies in her tummy.

Feel shame, sweet woman, her brain sounded in the man’s voice. Think of the husband you have a child with.

Her husband was dead. Nahu had died with his Watch brothers defending the princedom of Dassan against those Ptirrens and their insidious Shadows. (Those Shadows. They still gave her nightmares.) (As Nayari thought of them, and the Shadow-Men that had rode with them, the smudge of arm the girl Adeline had sewn up with avren lichen began to itch.) There was little to no chance her husband lived, and if he did he was unlikely to enter her life again.

Think of your child. This time it was her daughter’s voice in which her brain spoke. Think of Aeri. What will she think seeing her ma with another man, a man who’s not her da?

Aeri was growing fast. She was a precocious little girl, and she was growing fast. Perhaps too fast for Nayari’s liking but the faster she grew the sooner she’d get a proper job, the lesser Nayari would have to worry about fending for two mouths. The thought made her feel almost guilty.

They had gotten a fair new life, Aeri and her, gods be good. A fresh start. Fresh leaves to turn over, which was more than could be said about most other Dassan evacuees who'd fled to Fehnia.

Gerwin had taken them in, given them food, clothing, lodgings. His hoarse voice did his soft nature injustice, it did. He was a good man. His wife had succumbed to the flu, as had his son. Maybe Nayari and Aeri reminded him of them. He’d given Nayari a job at his rundown restaurant, Peacock’s Feather, fair pay. She got to keep the tips too, of which there were few anyway — until the regular coming of the mysterious rich man addicted to his afternoon diet.

A new voice in her head spoke up. Casteless Addie’s voice: It is all right for the lashes of not only men but also women to bat at anybody they find . . . attractive, as you put it.