The Tight Spot

"Oi! Back off, will ya?!” I hiss, tightening my hold on the loaf of bread beneath my cloak. One hand presses the loaf closer; the other raises at the intruder's face. It was a week in the labor house for this meagre get. My heart races in my chest from such a start. His eyes widen briefly before he smirks and shoulders me deeper into the hiding place. Grunting in indignation, I pull my cloak up around me. Forced in, I have little choice. Accommodate or be pushed out into the street. The guards’ footfalls shuffle past at the crossroads.

“Thieving, eh?” the stranger asks, shifting and pressing me in tighter, forcing us to crouch low. My free arm clamps the rough bread to my stomach under the cloak, bulging awkwardly. The stranger’s side wedges harder into me. The rising scent of two damp wool cloaks after a market day, behind a refuse heap, starts to saturate the cramped space. Where anyone looking for anything was loath to have to sort through.

It mixes with the sharp tang of river salt, and rat scuttles past, its copper tag jingling—a mark of the city’s cathedral, proof it will not be poisoned. Someone’s miracle skittering around in the muddy underbelly. Desperation alone would bring anyone here, pressed close beneath the painted prayer-scrolls someone has pasted above our heads, faded symbols for luck and salvation from the heavenly beings that are to be looking down in judgement of our every waking act.

“No, with child,” I reply. For a moment, I’m satisfied with the glimpse of surprise on his face before he recovers quickly.

“Yer not,” that infuriating twitch of his lips again. “I know you, you sing at The Swan.” He leans in, whispering like a child with a secret. “The Swan, that little tavern off Market Row. You have a patron who doesn’t provide even enough for bread, it seems.”

I hiss indignantly, “How, pray, do you know these things?” He flicks my hood back, revealing my short dark hair—almost shorn, but the curls fall too soft. His eyes scan my street clothes.

“Bella,” he calls me.

“That’s not my name. How do you know me?” My brows scrunch in irritation, and his cat ways.

“A lady yer size is hard to miss.”

“Why you—” This time, I strike at him. My height always marked me, letting me pass as a man. I raise my fist, but his is faster, hotter. Flame flashes between us. His strange honey eyes look gold for an instant. A fire mage, no less. Dangerous, powerful, reckless in those boyish eyes, guilds watched for the four pillars like hawks. My feet react, wanting to stamp it out, then I almost scream. For a sick moment, I think I’m dead. His filthy hand clamps my mouth; his other grips my head. I brace for burning, but feel nothing. So I bite hard, tasting blood.

“Gods Almighty!” he hisses. He doesn’t let go. “I won’t hurt ya, I’d have done it by now. Farley.”

He speaks my real name. My eyes dart to his wounded hand as his face draws close. His elbow has crushed the bread beneath my cloak. Jaw tight, the rest of me relaxes. He removes his hand and wraps it with a dirty cloth from his belt.

“Yer a right hellcat.” He mutters and looks angry, at least now. “Guess one has to pay for the pleasantries with your kind.”

“MY kind? They’re hunting you, not thieves. Unguilded.” The last word nearly spits out as profanity. All mages must join a guild or face death. “Who are you?”

“Duarte, at your fiery service, lady of the night,” he mocks, then pulls and rips under my cloak, as fury and surprise surge in me again as he takes half the loaf of bread under my nose.

“Why you-” I repeat and flex my hand again.

“Run.” He says suddenly, with a hard look.

“What?” My brows furrow again, and my mouth goes slack at his turn of tone.

“Run, my lady. Where there's smoke, there’s fire.” He smiles wildly, not even what I would call handsome, but it’s the blazing arrogance as the refuse pile by us bursts into flames. I don’t look back as I scrabble out the other side of the small hole. “St. Vincent’s!” I hear a call, but I ignore it as I pull my hood up, slip out onto the opposite street, take large strides, masculine strides, fast, hard. To the alley opposite, then down another busy street, as the guards go, chasing the smell of burning waste.

I make my way through the streets. Finally, reaching the tenements. The noise of the place accosts first, cursing, a drunken fight, the splashing of waste buckets, children playing or wailing, the repetitive prayers of the elderly to angels who seem closer now, with glassy eyes fixed on something far beyond this hellish, loud, and utterly true cacophony of life. The stench hits next, a wall of fetid waste, soup, and unwashed bodies as I negotiate my way up, stepping free of puddles as I ascend the stairs to the third level.

I come to the door I’m looking at and knock. It’s silent, except for weak mewling. I open anyway, knowing what I’m about to be met with.

“Oh… Anna,” I breathe as I rush in, dropping the crust of bread on the table as I take the small bundle out of her still arms. The bundle coughs, wet and choking, as I fall back to sit and rock the poor thing. I hum at first, then bend my lips down so the babe can hear as I sing.

“Hush, oh now, my baby,

The morning to kiss you soon,

Hush, my sweet, to sip

The daylight and dew…”

I sing until the mewling softens to a shuddering breath and then, the quiet. Tears streak down, hot and damning as I place the child back with mother. I bundle them both tightly, pulling the last of my own finery, a lace kerchief that I place and tuck around Anna’s light hair. I take the bread back, but drop two heavy silver coins on the small cracked table. I lock the door as I leave, going to find the landlord. I find him, a lean, hard-looking man who spits at my feet as I tell him the gravers need to be called for room 33. He looks at me, unconcerned, until I tell him about the silver provided for their service. That I will check the chapels and cemeteries to ensure they’ve been properly taken care of, and I’ll come back with his share for the trouble. I take off back into the streets, and I devour the bread with each step. Until I get to St. Vincent’s.

I keep my hood up as I trudge up the cathedral’s doors. My footsteps seem too clumsy, too loud in this place as I step inside and make my way down the nave. I take up two small candles after the last of my coin goes into the coffer, placing them in the white sand at the shrine, and I light them. I don’t know what to say. So I say nothing. My eyes drift up to the heavenly host. The army to defend the weak, widowed, powerless and orphaned. I don’t cry then, if they saw, they saw them both wither. She had been me, a few months ago, less than a year. A patron, fine dresses, kept. But the child changed all that. My lips pull down despite the bitterness and memories as I hear an odd shuffling behind me. Someone is dragging a heavy cloak with a limp. And I don’t need to look as to who it is, as that same fire-evoking, devil-smiling, angel-forsaken twit, Duarte, comes up beside me.

“I’m sorry for your friend,” the tone isn’t mocking, where I wish it would be.

“Thank you,” I say quietly. “It was you then? That left me the note.”

“Aye,” he replies. “She was a good girl, the sickness came on too quickly, though.” I close my eyes at that, at being too late. “So, you sing.” Duarte’s voice drops to just me and him, not even the heavens can hear. The implication makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.”

“Aye, I sing,” I answer, thinking of the small babe, the mercy I would call it, though not many would see it that way.

“The patron then, your benefactor?”

“He suspected. His brothers grew suspicious of his… attachment to me and his expenditure of coin.” I confess, and I all but hear his godsdamned smirk.

“Unguilded… so, air then?” he says, turning to me, gold eyes rippling in the heat of the flames of the dead. It was my turn to be accused, as we were both… guilty.