redwine 🙫 old rose harbor
during the night of the 5th of achtus, 2710
Great Lady, but the lass warmed up quick. He frowned, lifting an eyebrow. Wondering, again, where she came from, how long she’d been out on the streets. Not long, if she didn’t know what a boch was.
That flinch he saw when he reached out his hand made him wonder, still. He didn’t know what, but he was starting to stitch together something in his head, and he didn’t like it. Not out on the streets long, bloodied and torn, all proper-spoken, flinching at a man’s hand. He didn’t like it one bit, and he reckoned Ish wouldn’t, either. He wondered again about the wisdom of bringing the boch to hama, when he was under so much stress. The wick had dark places in his past, places he’d blotted out – was funny about children, Tom’d noticed – places Tom’d never asked about.
But he didn’t know what else to do.
As Caina tottered to his side, he replied, “A boch’s a little one, like you. It’s Tek, ye chen? Wick-speak, the tongue o’ spokes an’ the like. You spend time around ’em, you learn it.”
He tried to set a gentle pace, careful not to jostle her, but his strides were longer by far and he was aching to get out of the cold. He was cursing himself with every step. They hobbled haphazardly through the quiet streets of Redwine and into Basin Court without incident, the streets broadening out, the wind picking up; he kept an eye on every snake’s-mouth of an alleyway, every doorway draped in dark. He felt strange enough himself. Here he was, leading along some motherless, injured boch like a duckling, and covered in blood himself – but not his own! There was blood on his coat, blood on the knife at his belt. He felt steeped in it.
Caina’s little hand squeezed his, and he glanced down at her. As they passed under a streetlamp, he saw her dark eyes glistening in her pale, hollow face. Her question tore him out of his reverie; he grit his teeth for a second, looked away. Thought about how to answer.
“Uh, hell, well—” He thought about telling her it was none of her damn business; he thought again about giving her some fake name. He glanced around the empty marketplace, the barren stalls, the eaves newly-settled with snow. For every black-paned window a pair of eyes.
Then he looked back down at Caina, her gaze still trained on him, and heaved out a sigh. His breath smoked white in the dark air. “It’s Tom,” he replied, “Cooke. But – you can jus’ call me Tom. Like a tom cat, hey?” He offered her a flicker of a smile, then squeezed her hand back.
As they passed back into darkness, a chill wind plucked at his coat and sent snow whirling into their path. He felt flakes settle in his hair and eyebrows and stubble; his face and fingers were already tingling on their way to numbness. He spared Caina another quick glance, his eyes lingering on her frozen feet and bare arm. Hissing a string of profanities between his teeth, he slowed to a halt, letting go of her hand. They were near Clark’s Isle now, and the breeze carried whiffs of salt and rotting fish and old wood.
He moved in a little closer, stooping and wrapping the hem of his coat around her shoulder. As he started walking again, boots creaking heavily on the bridge that linked either half of the Rose to the bean, he tried to shield her from the wind with the extra fabric. “We got a ways yet. Quarter Fords,” he said gruffly. “You been there? Where’re you from, anyway? You ain’t got anybody in the Rose t’go to?”