Warrior by Jennifer Fallon Page B

her against the rough wooden wall of the tannery, his other hand groping down the front of her dress. She winced as he rhythmically slammed her against the wall, but whether from the rough way he was kneading her breast or the careless way he was using her, Rory couldn’t say. All he could feel was the pain in his head, like a dam swelling to bursting point with spring melt. The look on Patria’s face hurt more than what she was doing. It was the desolation that made Rory’s temples want to explode. The anguish, the hopelessness in her eyes . . .

    Rory couldn’t remember what he did next. All he remembered was the feeling that his head was going to explode . . . Then the pain went away as an anvil burst through the tannery wall behind them, striking the man a glancing blow on the side of his head. He dropped like a sack of wheat at Patria’s feet.
    She stared at him for a moment in shock, then saw the blood on his head and screamed.

    Rory was too shocked to know or care if the man was dead. He ran forward, grabbed Patria’s wrist and dragged her from the lane before her screams brought someone to investigate. Towing his cousin behind him, he ran down Victory Parade, away from Restinghouse Street, not stopping until the noise from the taverns had faded to silence and they were among the silent warehouses of the wharf district.

    “Are you all right?” he panted, when he felt it was safe to stop for a moment.

    Patria leaned against the wall of the warehouse and stared at him, her face pale in the darkness, her chest heaving. “Rory . . . what happened back there?”

    “Nothing . . .”

    “ Nothing ? Someone threw an anvil through a wall at my customer!” She shook her hand free and rubbed her wrist where he’d been holding her. “For all I know, he’s dead. And it’s your fault! You’ve ruined everything, you interfering little fool! I won’t be able to go back to Victory Parade again and it took me weeks to find that corner.”

    Rory looked at her in shock. “Go back ?”

    “Of course I have to go back.”

    “But that man—”

    “That man was putting food in your belly, Rory,” she informed him coldly. “You might not like how I’m doing it, but at least one person in this family is capable of earning a living.”

    Rory shook his head, unable to believe Patria was a willing participant in this awful trade.
    “Maybe . . . if you spoke to Grandpa . . .”

    She swore softly at him. “Grandpa! What good is he?”

    “He knows people—”

    “Grandpa knows nothing, Rory,” Patria scoffed. “All his tales about his rich family, and how we’re cousins by marriage to the royal house of Hythria, are just stories he makes up to keep our minds off our empty stomachs. When I was little, he used to tell me my great-great-grandmother was a Harshini, too. Do you really think he’d be down here starving with the rest of us in the Talabar slums if even one of his tall tales was true?”

    Rory couldn’t really answer that. When she saw him hesitate, Patria smiled sourly. “See, even you can’t defend him, can you? Well, I’m sick of being hungry, Rory, and if opening my legs to a stranger is all it takes to fill my belly and the bellies of my family, then I don’t care how many drunks have their way with me. Not so long as they’re paying me up front.”

    Without waiting for him to answer, Patria pushed her way past him and headed down the lane.
    When she reached the end she turned right, heading back towards Restinghouse Street.

    It was much later before Rory got home and, as usual, the only one still awake was his grandfather. The old man sat by the window, as he did every night, staring out into the darkness. When he was small, Rory used to wonder if he was waiting for someone to come walking down the street.

    “Bit late for a stroll, isn’t it?”

    Rory turned to his grandfather, hoping there was nobody else awake. “I had to do something,”
    he replied softly in Hythrun as he