The Thief King

41 | Death within Shadows

Sera dropped Hannah off at Joey's place, the rest of the Carvers were still ignorant of the burden their second youngest son bore. They invited Hannah in with smiles and laughs, the two youngest Carver children, Thomas and Georgie, running around the tiny house like wild animals.

Hannah had dragged herself into the fray, avoiding clumsy limbs and greeting both Magada and her husband Vincent with a distracted smile. Had it not been for Tom almost running into the food and ruining dinner, Magada would have trapped Hannah with concerned questions. As it was, she escaped to find Joey on his bed, three empty cots edging each remaining wall.

"Jo?" Hannah called by the threshold.

He looked up, rubbed his sleeve under his eyes, and swung his feet off the bed.

"You don't need to get up." Hannah rushed forward, grabbing his hands and pulling him back onto the bed, where she sat with her legs crossed facing him. "I think you better tell them tonight. It's eating you up alive."

Joey pulled his knees to his chin. "I would if I knew what to say. I was gonna do it this morning, but then...then Ma starts goin' on about Bay needing new socks and how she had bought wool at the market to sew some." His eyes glittered with fresh tears.

"The longer you wait..." Hannah took a deep breath in.

"I know. I'll tell them. Tonight."

At the dinner table, conversation steered towards the market and the twins' obsession with the sweetmeats it had to offer. Eventually things grew out of hand, and Magada's booming voice interrupted the whines and pleads for more, Vincent ever silent at the head of the table with his eyes on his food.

Time dragged, and Joey's presence next to Hannah was like watching an arrow fly towards someone with no voice to warn them.

"The two of ye are rather quiet," Magada said across the table, dishing a hefty helping into her husband's dwindling bowl of soup. Vincent was none the wiser, nose buried in papers and scrolls. "Makes me worried ye goin' to be slippin' out in the middle o' the night. Don't look so shocked, Miss Seaward. Ye think I don't notice them yawns and dark circles under yer eyes?"

Hannah looked to Joey for some backup, but her friend's eyes were lowered and his soup was providing a far more riveting performance as his spoon circled the bowl. Mr Carter was also far too preoccupied, work having sprung a last minute task for him to sort out.

Magada made a knowing noise in the back of her throat, ceased filling her husband's almost overflowing bowl, and looked at Hannah with a poignant gaze. "Well? Anything new then? What ye been learning at that school?"

Hannah bit on her bottom lip, scrambling to think of her latest lesson. "It was...um."

"Joey?"

Joey jumped, dropped his spoon, and flinched as hot soup hit his chin, hand, and chest.

"Heavens boy," Magada said standing up, "ye be as jumpy as a rabbit these days. If I didn't know any better I'd say you were frightened by something." Her large frame bustled around the table and towards the kitchen, mumbles of clumsiness and the youth of the day echoing in her wake.

Mr Carver set a piece of parchment down and peered at his son over his spectacles. With dark hair as thick as a horse's main trimmed close to the wick, he looked like a man struck by lightening. His skin appeared bright red from the raging fire in the corner fireplace, but was usually pale like Joey's.

"What you working on, Mr Carver?" Hannah asked when the silence grew too much. "Is it anything interesting?"

"Unlikely for young'ns," he said, "but fascinating for me. Us older folk find tales in the most mundane of matters."