Free Frost by Kate Avery Ellison Page B

made a dull thudding sound against the door. I noticed the shiny brass knocker and tried it. I felt very shabby, standing on that massive porch with my ragged blue cloak on my back and wilting blossoms in my hair.
    Only a few people moved about in the streets below. Everyone was probably working on filling their quotas, or else avoiding being out for fear of the Watchers.
    Footsteps echoed inside the house, and the door was yanked open. A woman wearing a pressed white apron regarded me with suspicion in her flat gray eyes. “If you’ve brought the pastries quota, you’ll have to deliver it around back.”
    Pastries quota? Our sugar was rationed because of the winter. Why did the Mayor family get pastries? I shook my head. “No—I’m here to see the Mayor.”
    She squinted at me. “Name?”
    “Lia Weaver.”
    At the mention of Weaver , which obviously marked me as a worker instead of one of the Elder family’s daughters, the maid began to close the door. “Wait,” I said, stepping forward and shoving my foot in the crack before she could shut me out completely. “I’m a friend of Ann’s. She’ll be furious if she hears I was denied entrance.”
    It was a gamble—I had never been to Ann’s house before, invited or otherwise. But the maid might listen.
    She frowned and glanced me over again through the crack. “Come in,” she said. “I will ask him. But I make no promises.”
    With a sigh of relief, I stepped inside. The maid shut the door behind me.
    “Wait here,” she ordered with a sniff, and disappeared down the hall.
    I looked around. The wood floor beneath my feet was shiny with wax. A gleaming brass lamp hung over my head. Rose-painted paper covered the walls, and through a doorway I glimpsed plush furniture and a thick fur rug. Ann’s clothing was always a little nicer than the rest of ours, but she never said anything about the luxury that her family lived in. A servant? Special quotas delivered straight to her house? Shining floors and papered walls?
    The maid reappeared, and although her frown hadn’t been replaced with a smile, she no longer looked at me as though I were dirt on the floor. “He will see you in his study,” she said.
    We went up a flight of stairs. I was still struggling to keep my mouth from gaping open like a fool’s as I stared at the things around me—rugs on the hall floors. A painting on the wall of Ann and her family. More lamps, all shiny brass.
    The maid stopped in front of a closed door and knocked gently. I heard the Mayor’s low tenor murmuring on the other side. I could just barely make out the words.
    “...Eloisa and Aaron...yes, that might be problematic...”
    Eloisa and Aaron? My parents’ names?
    The maid knocked again, and the murmuring ceased. “Come in,” the Mayor called in a louder voice, and she opened it and moved aside for me.
    My heart hammering, I stepped into the room.
     
     

EIGHT
     
     
    HE SAT AT a desk, surrounded by walls of books. A fireplace warmed the room, and through a window white with frost I saw the gate to the village, the path that led to my farm, crowded on both sides with trees, and above the trees, the mountains. The Mayor smiled at me, but I was still hearing my parents’ names spoken in his voice, and the gnawing nervousness in my stomach did not ease.
    “Sit down, Lia,” he said.
    I was surprised he knew my name, and it must have showed on my face, because he said, “I knew your parents, my dear. Wonderful folk. So sorry about what happened to them.”
    “Thank you,” I murmured, sinking into a chair looking down at my hands. Coldness seeped through my veins, and every single bit of me wanted to ask him what he’d been saying about them just a moment earlier. But I didn’t ask. “They are missed,” I said instead.
    “Yes,” he agreed. “Now, what can I do for you? I do not normally grant audiences with whoever comes to visit me, but you are Ann’s friend.” He smiled, and his teeth were as bright white