“Sylah?”
“Yes?”
“You’re a maiden’s tit sometimes.”
Sylah gasped.
“Did you just swear?”
—
Seventh strike came and went, but still Hassa waited. The bag she wore dug into the welts across her back. Welts administered by the Ember chief of chambers in the Keep after they had caught her in the wrong room. She rubbed her shoulder with her limb and winced. Made for servitude.
She’d heard Turin say the words to Sylah. Turin, a woman who was too stupid to learn their language. A woman who was a servant to people’s desires. But Hassa didn’t judge Turin as harshly as she would have liked. The woman had taken Hassa in, an undocumented Ghosting, the bastard of an Ember.
Turin had protected Hassa as a babe, driven by the guilt of her mother’s death. Hassa had no doubt Turin had sold her mother’s whereabouts to her father, the result of which was her murder. Marigold cut Hassa from the womb, because Ghostings protected their own.
“Aho, I’ve got something to trade. What have you got, Ghosting?” The Duster came up behind her holding a battered book.
She nodded. Ghostings always had something to trade. She grasped the book between her limbs and turned it over.
It was old, she wasn’t sure how old; she’d have to show it to the elders.
“You got any tree gum? The market was out.”
She did. She gave a sharp nod of assent and opened her bag. The Duster peered in as if it were a market stall.
“Eeyah, what’s that?”
She shouldered him away.
“Okay, okay.” He backed away, and she continued rummaging.
She used her right limb to rummage in her bag, pushing the pot of tree gum upward for her left limb to pincer it together. She passed it to the trader.
“Thanks.” He ambled off, muttering to himself about the creepiness of Ghostings. As if she had no ears. No voice.
Fucking idiot, she signed at his back.
Seventh strike had long passed. Sylah still hadn’t turned up. She wasn’t coming.
Hassa closed her bag, her phantom fingers resting on the other half of a rolled-up map before she turned on her heel and left.