“I’ll have a word with you, boy,” he said. He looked to be somewhere in his forties and dressed in the fine clothes of the upper class, but based on the way he’d lifted me, he was much stronger than I expected of a nobleman. He smiled slightly as he studied me, his thin mouth barely visible behind a neatly trimmed brown beard. His were dark brown and more tightly focused than I’d ever seen before. He grabbed my shirt and yanked me to my feet. The pity I felt for myself wasn’t shared by the man with the coins. I wanted to look up at whoever had saved me further beating, but I was hunched in the only position that didn’t send me gasping in pain, and I was in no hurry to change that. The man paid the butcher, who stomped away. “If you ever come into my shop again, I’ll cut you up and sell you as meat at the market. “Fifty? One moment.” The butcher gave me a final kick in the side, then leaned low toward me. Then the man said, “I’ll pay you fifty garlins if you turn that boy over to me now.” My well-trained ears heard the sound of coins in a bag, “An entire roast? Really? And what is the cost?” The butcher landed a second kick and had reared back for a third, when another man shouted, “Stop!” I curled into a ball, prepared for a beating I wasn’t sure I’d live to regret.
His laughter was quickly followed up with a kick to my back that chased my breath away. “’Bout time you get what’s comin’ to you, filthy beggar.”Īs a point of fact, I hadn’t begged for anything. Luckily, I managed to keep hold of the roast, although it did no favors to my right shoulder as I fell onto the hard dirt road.
I knew how to disappear there.Īnd I might have made it, if not for the bald man sitting outside the tavern, who stretched out his foot in time to trip me. Turbeldy’s Orphanage for Disadvantaged Boys. If I hadn’t turned when I did, the cleaver would’ve found its target.īut I was only a block from Mrs. Even though he was aiming for me, I couldn’t help but admire his throwing accuracy. I rounded a corner just as the cleaver suddenly cut into a wood post behind me. It was this sort of thought that encouraged me to run faster. Undoubtedly a country where killing a meat thief was allowed. He was originally from one of the far western countries. He yelled very loudly in his native language, one I didn’t recognize. He was only a few paces behind now, chasing me at a better speed than I’d have expected for a man of his girth. Brittany Snow Hopes Her New Mental Health Book Helps Readers Feel "They're Not Alone"
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