Shadows in the Trees: Book 1

Chapter 7

Freya heard a crash. She turned to see Malik with a pile of garbage at his feet, cursing as he sorted through it.

"Be quiet!" she admonished. "And stop breaking the merchandise."

"I'm doing my best," Malik whispered back, rolling his eyes.

She scoffed and turned back to the lock on her trash box, carefully maneuvering her picks. The rich liked to lock up their trash when they put it in the alleyways for the waste collectors, which Freya found completely absurd. It's not as if it has value to them if they're throwing it away, she thought, frowning at the particularly stubborn lock. It gave with a defeated click.

"Finally!" Freya muttered to herself, opening the heavy lid and leaning it gingerly against the alley wall. She dug around the decomposing food and found a faded rug and a flouncy dress with a tear in the hem. "Malik! I have a rug, it looks like a Grezian woven rug, we could make hundreds from this! And I can sew the hem of this dress, maybe clean a few of the stains, we could sell it to some foolish girl who wants to pretend she has money."

Malik leaned over her shoulder to examine her finds. "Or a mother trying to marry her daughter up the ladder. The rug is in good condition, that's a good find."

"I can't believe they're throwing it away," Freya said, looking up at the dark windows of the town house.

"It probably belongs to some merchant who found a better one," Malik shrugged, returning to his pile.

Freya shook her head. Her mother had never wasted anything. When something was old or broken, she always had a creative way to re-purpose it. She tried to remember what her mother looked like and found she only had vague memories of her dark hair, streaked with gray. She remembered her warm, freckled skin and deep brown eyes, but only because she saw them in herself. Her stomach twisted as she tried to recall her mother's smell, only to find that she couldn't. Had it been jasmine? Lilies? The dusty, spicy smell of their wagon?

"Freya!" Malik whispered, and she started. "Do you hear that?" Freya cocked her head. Horse hooves, clopping down the cobbled street towards them. She usually heard the Royal Guards far before Malik did. She cursed herself for allowing her mind to wander. She quickly closed the trash bin and tucked the rug and the dress behind it. She gestured for Malik to climb the walls. She soundlessly hopped onto the trash bin and began using the window ledges and bricks for footholds and handholds. Malik followed behind her. She noticed that the clopping had stopped.

"I think they moved on," Freya whispered. She heard Malik yelp, and looked over her shoulder to see an officer pulling him to the ground by his ankle.

"Go!" Malik cried, fighting the soldier. 

Freya hesitated a moment before climbing again. Suddenly, she felt a sharp pain on her hand, and her hold slipped. Off balance, she pivoted until her back slammed into the brick, and she fell, hitting a trash box before rolling onto the ground in a heap. She heard Malik yelling, but it sounded far away, and she couldn't make out the words. She tried to get herself onto all fours and noticed that her knuckles were bloody.  Someone heaved her to a standing position. Her stomach roiled from the sudden motion, and she vomited on a pair of shiny black boots.

"Ugh," a high-pitched voice said. 

Her vision focused, and she saw a soldier standing in front of her holding a wooden staff. Candles had been lit, setting the windows aglow. In the dim light, Freya could see blood on the top of the staff. It looked like the shaft of a longspear. Onlookers in their nightshirts appeared at the mouth of the alleyway, and faces crowded at the windows above.

"Go back inside!" one of the officers holding her demanded. They slowly returned to their houses, whispering to each other as they went.

"We finally got you," the guard with the rod said. "We've been looking for you for months."

"We haven't done anything," Freya slurred. "Climbing a wall isn't a crime."

The guard laughed. "Please, we know who you are. You're the vermin who have been stealing trash."

"It's not stealing if no one wants it," Freya said.

"Stop talking!" Malik hissed. He looked back at the guard and smiled. "Listen, ma'am, we were just out for a stroll and decided to climb the wall on a dare. We haven't been stealing any trash," he said, wrinkling his nose. "Who would want to steal trash?"

The guard smirked. "You weren't as careful as you thought. I have a complaint from a woman down the street of two people, a tall boy and a girl with white hair, digging through the trash and taking things from it. She saw it all from her window."

"My hair is technically blonde," Freya muttered.

"Shut. Up!" Malik said. Freya garbled something unintelligible back at him. "Listen, we're desperate, alright? We didn't think anyone would miss a few things from the trash, it was a victimless crime," Malik explained, peering through his eyelashes and giving the guard a rueful smile.

"Explain it to the King," the guard said. "In the meantime, you'll await your hearing in prison. Take them away," she said, waving her hand and walking back to her horse.

"We'll never see the King!" Freya yelled, her head snapping up. "We'll rot in there!" she began fighting the officers clumsily. "No, no, no! I can't go in there, I can't go in there -- "

"Ma'am, please! I'll give you whatever you want!" Malik cried. Freya screamed for Eliza, for her mother, for Malik. The officer mounted her horse, and Malik and Freya were tossed into the back of a wagon bound for Ludovic prison.