Читать книгу Red Sister онлайн | страница 21

‘Ten and you get on your way before the hour’s old,’ the father countered.

Within the aforementioned hour Saida had joined them in the cage, her pale hair veiling a down-turned face. The cart moved off without delay, heavier one girl and lighter five pennies. Nona watched through the bars, the father counting the coins over and again as if they might multiply in his hand, his wife clutching at herself. The mother’s wailing followed them as far as the cross-roads.

‘How old are you?’ Markus, a solid dark-haired boy who seemed very proud of his ten years, asked the question. He’d asked Nona the same when she joined them. She’d said nine because he seemed to need a number.

‘Eight.’ Saida sniffed and wiped her nose with a muddy hand.

‘Eight? Hope’s blood! I thought you were thirteen!’ Markus seemed in equal measure both pleased to keep his place as oldest, and outraged by Saida’s size.

‘Gerant in her,’ offered Chara, a dark girl with hair so short her scalp shone through.

Nona didn’t know what gerant was, except that if you had it you’d be big.

Saida shuffled closer to Nona. As a farm-girl she knew not to sit above the wheels if you didn’t want your teeth rattled out.

‘Don’t sit by her,’ Markus said. ‘Cursed, that one is.’

‘She came with blood on her,’ Chara said. The others nodded.

Markus delivered the final and most damning verdict. ‘No charge.’

Nona couldn’t argue. Even Hessa with her withered leg had cost Giljohn a clipped penny. She shrugged and brought her knees up to her chest.

Saida pushed aside her hair, sniffed mightily, and threw a thick arm about Nona drawing her close. Alarmed, Nona had pushed back but there was no resisting the bigger girl’s strength. They held like that as the wagon jolted beneath them, Saida weeping, and when the girl finally released her Nona found her own eyes full of tears, though she couldn’t say why. Perhaps the piece of her that should know the answer was broken.

Nona knew she should say something but couldn’t find the right words. Maybe she’d left them in the village, on her mother’s floor. Instead of silence she chose to say the thing that she had said only once before – the thing that had put her in the cage.