Free Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows by Winterborn Page A

mating tools.
    A man that the Winter Queen called Viandaran; that the Oracle had called the Warlord, who had—until he had marked her in a fortress beneath mountains—been a grudgingly trusted domicis.
    She could make a den out of these?
    The silence was long. And into it, mixed with doubt, was a very real homesickness.
    Angel. Arann. Carver. Finch. Jester. Daine. Kiriel. Teller.
What are you doing
?
     
     

CHAPTER ONE
    7th of Scaral, 427 AA
    Averalaan Aramarelas, House Terafin
    Home was where his mother brought her clients.
    He learned—well before conscious memory started—that those clients were important men. And that many of them didn't want to know that she had a child.
    During those nights, he would hide in the closet, or sometimes in the kitchen if the lights were low, and he would hoard his words, his inexplicable child noises; it was part of hiding. Afterward, his mother would come to him and take him quietly into her bed. He never asked her about the men; she never spoke of them. But sometimes she would go out with him the next day, and buy him something special, fruits or white bread from the bakers.
    He learned to love the day. And to hate the night.
    She was often angry. He remembered that clearly. He learned to fear her anger more than he feared hunger or cold, but he found that silence was the best way to avoid it, and silence became a rule of life, a comfortable law.
    Sometimes she would talk about her childhood. He loved those times. She spoke about her birthday, her mother, always her mother. She never spoke about her father, but that seemed natural to him; he had no father of his own. They lived like that, mother and son, their days a prelude to her evenings, his silence.
    As he grew older, it was harder; harder to hide.
    As he grew older, and she grew older, her youth fading beneath the glare of sun, heat, hunger, her back bent by the poverty that he understood as part of his life, she would sometimes leave for the evening.
    She would tuck him into bed, and tell him that she would return in the morning, and he would stay awake in the still of the night, staring at the low ceiling, until sleep snuck up on him. But he promised her that he would help her. That one day, she would live in a better place, and she would never have to spend time in the company of her men again.
    He started thieving when he was six.
    He was small for his age, waiflike; he could get close to people because they ignored him. Because he was quiet.
    She was angry about the theft. The first time he had given her money, she went all gray, and instead of being proud of him, as she so seldom was, her anger came up instead, like sunrise. He knew she was angry. But she didn't hit him, and she didn't shout at him.
    Instead, she left their two-room home, while the light of the sun was high.
    She returned before sunset, to change into the gaudy clothing she wore at night, her lips a thin line, the corners of her mouth deep with age.
    "You don't have no call to go thieving," she told him, her words as tight and angry as her expression.
    "But it's money, Mom."
    "It ain't
our
money, boy."
    "But—but—it's better than the money you get from those men. I can get us money, Mom. You don't have to see them no more."
    She caught him by the shoulders, her fingers sharp as knives. "That's
my
job, boy."
    "But Peg says you're just selling yourself."
    "And what if I am? I'm selling what's
mine
. I'm not selling what belongs to anyone else. You understand? It's honest work. I do it because it's all I can do, but I ain't selling anything that belongs to anyone else. Where'd that money come from?"
    He was smart enough not to shrug. "Some man."
    "Some man? And what if that man has a little boy, like you? What if he has a bunch, eh? What if you just stole the food off their plates?"
    He was silent. It had never occurred to him to wonder.
    "I want you to be bigger, to be stronger. I want you to be
better
than that. You grow up, you can join the Kings'