Kared's Children - Prologue

-Which was yet another thing: Damon didn’t have even a crossbow yet. All he carried on his watch was a standard-issue weapon, a sword roughly the length of his arm, its blade dull and ponderous. If ever he’d seen anything untoward on his watch, he’d have had to shout at it to keep it away from the wall.

Borja cackled from down the rampart. "Remind me some time, Clair."

Damon turned. "Remind you of what?"

The old man’s whiskers were matted. "Remind me I have stories to tell you."

Damon nodded. "I will."

That was as close as Borja ever came to bragging about his history. Given the bravado of the other guards, Damon found him downright modest. It was easy to forgive the old man such a simple mention of his past.

Borja cleared his throat again and limped slowly out along the wall. "What are you still doing here, anyway?" His back was turned. "Go home. Go out. Be young. Find yourself a girl. Have lots of little Clairs."

Damon laughed and hitched his scabbard to his belt. "See you tomorrow, Borja."

Borja spat again over the side of the wall. "Har har har! Tomorrow, Clair. Tomorrow will take care of itself."

Damon trundled down the steps.

. . .

As he made his way through the liquid crowd of vendors, tourists, merchants, couriers, soldiers, shoppers, and pedestrians packing the streets of the city, Damon tried to lose himself amid the swirls of color and life. When he got home, his room would be dull and empty, a place to brood or sleep. He had lost his family long ago. His father he’d never known. His mother he knew only by a flash of light, a color, a memory he thought he’d had, of her bending over him as he was about to sleep, on her face a look of gentleness and great love.

He might have imagined that memory.

Damon had lived a few years in Rowan’s orphanage. Though the priestesses there had treated him well enough, nothing they could have done would have replaced what he’d lost or dulled his sense of what he’d never had. He was aware of those absences constantly. When he saw couples kiss, when he saw mothers or fathers preen over their children, he was reminded yet again that he’d never known a hug or a caress other than the impersonal but well-intentioned touches of the priestesses.

He roomed at the home of an old woman, Mother Bedelia, who once had been secretary to the Mayor of Rowan. Mother Bedelia was short and round like a pomegranate, and on days when she cooked in her kitchen, which was often, she almost was as red. She had been kind to Damon. She charged him only a day’s pay for an entire month’s rent. She also fed him and fussed over him as if he were her own. She was as close to family as he ever had known; he had lived in her home since he was thirteen, only a year after the orphanage had released him to the streets.

He stopped at a vendor’s fruit stand and picked up an apple. The vendor, a thin, dark man, hopped from foot to foot while Damon bit into it. It was good. Damon hadn’t eaten since early in his shift. "How much for the melon?"