I've been reincarnated into another world as a witch

Chapter 37: Henriette Coldswell

Agnes lifted her ankle length skirt as she stepped over a filthy looking puddle, its murky and slimy water threatening to stain the shoes she had bought the previous week.

Today she was in the Azmeth district, the most poverty stricken area of Gismead, located right in the center of the common sect.

Agnes had started her life here, as a very poor and scrawny girl, the daughter of two factory workers, who had long since died. Through some connections she managed to get a job as a cleaner in the home of a wealthy merchant who lived on the nicer side of the common sect. At the time she had been ecstatic that she would be leaving Azmeth behind her and moving to a much nicer area, a brighter future. From there she worked her way up and ended up working for a noble family and was able to make a good living for herself.

She hated coming to Azmeth, she hated seeing the starving people lined up on the filthy street floors, she hated the stench of sewage and alcohol that seemed to have settled over the district like mist. She hated the constant noise, the pained distant cries of dying people and the young children begging for money as she walked past. She hated it.

However, her Lady Riley had asked her to go and hang up some posters and recruit some girls for the safe house while Lady Riley was at the Royal palace taking the Mage exam. So she shoved her disgust and contempt for the place aside and carried on walking to the town hall.

The town hall was quite a dilapidated building. The wood was turning green and flaking off due to rot. The water stained floorstones had small vines/shoots growing between the cracks and she was sure that from the corner of her eyes she could see rats scuttling about the place, diving and ducking behind the wooden poles and stone blocks, making the place creek eerily as they ran about.

Wasting no time at all, she walked up to the wooden board that read: Job Opportunities, and took out the small nail and hammer and she had carried in her dress pocket and hammered the poster that Lady Riley had written onto the board.

After she had secured it onto the board she read through the poster.

The poster offered free room and board as well as a job at a café, all free of charge, to women who were struggling to keep them and their children fed. Once again Agnes was overtaken with pride, she thought that she was the luckiest maid in all of Gismead to have ended up working for such a noble and kind Lady. Honestly, it was almost inconceivable to her how Lady Riley could be so generous to complete strangers. Agnes admitted to herself that even if she had somehow managed to become a noble, she would be much greedier and much more selfish with her money and assets, than Lady Riley was.

"Excuse me..." Agnes snapped back to attention at the sound of a frail and parched voice from behind her. She turned around to see a woman standing there. Agnes wondered how she hadn't heard her coming up behind her, but as she scanned over the woman she could see why...

At first the woman seemed more like a girl because of her small stature, but at a second glass you could see that she was fully grown, yet frail and hunched over. Her cheeks were sunken in and there were dark circles under her eyes. She had a painfully thin look about her, Agnes imagined that she herself had once looked exactly like this. Small, hungry, desperate and yet terrified of the world around her. Except Agnes didn't have a small and unhealthy looking child clinging nervously to her skirt, like this woman had.

The small boy clinging to her leg looked as though he couldn't be older than three years old, yet Agnes knew that the children grew much shorter and frailer here due to malnutrition. He was probably four or five years old.

"Yes." Agnes answered.

"That poster..." she half whispered, "is it legitimate?" She asked with a hopeful glint in her tired eyes.