Page 6 of Reap & Sow

“Your servitude is almost at its end, young Shaws. Your freedom at hand.” The candles in the chandelier danced as Mr. Night’s form unraveled, like blackest coal smoke. Silver eyes flared the color of fire. “You should be happy.”

The light steadied, and he was gone.

Shadows were Mr. Night’s domain—the cornerstone of his power—and he knew well how it unsettled them. Eda had never witnessed his other abilities firsthand. She did not need to. The Pacts he forged were proof enough that he was capable of things beyond her ken.

Ben made for the staircase, shoulders high and taut as a bowstring. Lawrie followed with a sigh.

“Lawrie—”

“Not now, Eda.”

Rain pounded on the windows. Eda stood alone in the pool of flickering candlelight for some time, watching uneasily as shadows writhed beyond its borders. She clenched her fists.

Ten more years. Just ten.

Mr. Night was right—they couldn’t falter now. Not with two decades of servitude finally at its denouement. What would it be like, she wondered, to live outside his shadow? To be set free into the light, directionless and new as a baby bird? Eda did not know.

Hope stirred, chased by a writhing tendril of fear.

A new life. A new start. A chance to find out.

And only one more Pact in their way.

Two

Precious few flowers grew in Blackbridge, but Eda knew where to find them.

The city was a sprawling landscape of canals and bridges and towering spires—the oldest conurbation in all of Wesland. Little greenery survived among the hard-packed thoroughfares, save for the maintained gardens of the upper city. But Shaws’ Antiques & Curiosities was advantageously placed opposite an alleyway that cut through to the Saint’s Waterway. The great river bisected the city from the east, and water lilies sometimes grew along its bank.

Eda navigated herself down the service steps to the river’s edge. A cluster of delicate water lilies clung to the algae-thick margins; she pulled a handful free. They were wet and rumpled, but they cost nothing. Aldith Moore would charge two coppers for her pretty floral arrangements, and Shaws’ Antiques didn’t make enough to warrant such a frivolous purchase every week. Eda preferred it this way. She liked the honesty in doing a thing yourself. In owing nothing to no one.

The foreshore was busy of a morning, thick with opportunistic street urchins. Eda was unsurprised to find a young boy in filthy garments at her back as she straightened. She snatched his reaching hand. “What are you picking my pockets for?” she groused as he hissed like an alley cat. “Do I look monied to you?”

“Ger’off!” He kicked and thrashed. She let him go. He fell onto the steps.

“A two-horse carriage is stopped back up the street, with gilding on the doors. Try your luck there.”

The boy spat at her and bolted. I swear they’re getting bolder.

She took the main road westbound. The Waterway was commonly thought of as a border dividing the wealthy boroughs of the upper city and the heaving chaos of the lower. Living along its banks made Eda’s world some strange amalgam of the two. Hers was the borough of Crowgate: an odd melting pot of working-class metalwork, whinnying cart horses, shrieking children, and barking dogs. Traffic from the inner city brought iron-shod hooves and carriages, lively street fiddlers, and busy merchants.

She felt apart from all of it.

Two girls with dirty hems gossiped in a shop doorway, leaning against each other in mirth. The sight made Eda’s heart ache. She had no friends of her own. What would she talk about, as other women talked to one another? What precious secrets and vulnerable pieces of herself could she share, when to speak any of it aloud would end with a hangman’s noose about her neck? Until her father’s debt was cleared, getting close to anyone spelled disaster.

Eda thought of Wymond. The merchant’s son had first come to the shop on business but returned over and over with small, transparent excuses meant to place him in her path. His dark eyes had set her pulse racing in unfamiliar ways, and it was not long before they were sneaking off together. She’d cherished those stolen moments: fevered, thrilling, all hers. Sharing Wymond’s bed had made it easy to kid herself.

But when he offered to leave his father’s business—to stay in Blackbridge with her—Eda had forced herself to call him foolish. To tell him their entanglement had been a mere tryst. Wymond left brokenhearted. Eda allowed herself to weep at the time, while Lawrie awkwardly petted her hair and assured her it always ended in tears with the pretty boys, anyway.

Wymond would never know that she’d done him a kindness, for no man should love her. Not so long as her life was paved with shadows.

Eda shook off the reverie like a bad chill.

One of the girls in the doorway wore a vial of colloidal silver upon her breast. A cheap knockoff, no doubt, peddled all across the city as protection from the demonic. The real thing was said to be corrosive as acid upon a demon’s skin. Not that Eda had need of such things. It was only a biting reminder of the yawning divide between her and everyone else. She was a mere specter in this city. Friends, lovers, protection from demons—all wasted on her.

Eda looked away before resentment rose like bile.

At the mouth of the next bridge, a templehouse loomed over the river. It was an aged building of discolored limestone, paler than the sagging, half-timbered stucco houses lining the streets around it. The templehouse marked the center of Crowgate’s parish, and though Eda did not worship, she visited the grounds every week without fail.