Min La slept heavily, another benefit of a full stomach. When he woke, despite the cold, he felt excitement, anticipation, and perhaps a little fear. Today was the day he would finally start down a new path. For nearly ten years he had been wandering Láokoth without aim or purpose. Today, at last, after years of failed attempts, he’d start his escape.
As he tried to lift himself off the little pile of rags, the cold morning began to set in. It would seem that not even a full belly could stop the bitter autumn night from wrapping like iron around his limbs and fingers. He groaned as he struggled to sit up.
The darkness in the little stone house was lit dimly by the pink of early morning pouring through the slightly open doorway. The chill had settled like fog near the rotted wooden floor. There was frost on the tips of some of the rags that made up his bed. It sparkled like crystal in the morning sunlight. It was not yet winter and the freezing cold nights had already begun. This far north it would be a short autumn. He was relieved to see that at least it was not raining. That was a bit of good luck.
Pulling the mat off himself, he sat up and put his back against the cold stone wall while he tried to wake up. The colder the nights, the harder it was to shake the numb of a hard sleep off his tired mind.
After he had combed his hair and tied it again in a low, neat knot, he donned his coat, which he had left near the stove in the night, in hopes that it could retain some of the last heat by the time morning came. But the thin wool was bitterly cold and he hissed under his breath as he slipped his arms through the icy sleeves. He used strips of brown cloth to bind the cuffs the way his brother had taught him a lifetime ago. This would take care of the excess length and make the thin coat a little warmer by closing the sleeves to the wind. Min La’s brother, a housesword, had told him that this was what soldiers did on patrol. Most military golts were made with ties built into the sleeves for just this reason. But all swords knew how to do this even without the built-in ties. When little Min La had struggled to tie his sleeves himself with just one hand, his brother had patiently taught him how to use his teeth and a special knot. Even after all these years, the process still came as naturally as fastening a button.
He touched his chest. A habitual motion that he had done for nearly ten years whenever he felt nervous or uneasy. He felt his fingers find the shape of the martial seal that he wore on a chain around his neck. His dead brother’s martial seal.
The thick chain was a warm and comfortable weight around his neck. He was used to it. Sometimes he even forgot about it. When it was all he could do to fill his belly or find a safe place to sleep, the familiar weight around his neck was as far from his thoughts as the home he had had to leave all those years ago. Most days he barely felt it, as heavy as it was against his breast.
Today, however, it felt a little heavier, but also a little warmer. Warm against his cold skin. Warm in the little, cold, stone house. His fingers traced the shape of the medallion absently through his golt and his coat. Once he made it to the south he would have fewer distractions in his daily life and the memories of his brother and the rest of his family would come to linger nearer his mind. He wondered then if it was not easier to forget, easier to be without the pain that the memory carried with it.
Ready at last, Min La went back to his little nest against the wall to retrieve his bag in which had had carefully tucked his silver.
But the bag wasn’t there.
Last night he had held it in his arms as he’d fallen asleep, a habit he’d developed years ago. He had been so distracted by the cold that he hadn’t even noticed when he woke up that it wasn’t there. He moved some of the rags aside, but he still couldn’t find it. In a sudden panic, he tore the pile apart, picking through each rag one at a time, but there was no sign of his bag. No sign of the silver.
Cold and a little hungry, the panic passed over him in overwhelming waves. He felt his vision swim and his legs soften. He nearly had to sit down.
No, he had to focus.
Gathering himself, he made a thorough search of the entire little stone house, but the bag was nowhere to be found.
It was then that he saw the door.
When he woke this morning it had been because the daylight had warmed his cheek, the daylight that poured through a gap in the doorway together with a cold breeze. The door was not as he had left it yesterday, carefully covering the entire opening so as to keep out the cold. Instead it seemed to be only propped in place. Suddenly he remembered the sounds he had heard outside as he’d fallen asleep last night.
Moving the door aside, he saw at the threshold a mess of dried muddy footprints. Children’s footprints.
Not just there, he saw now. The floor of the little stone house was dirty, but he clearly saw fresh muddy footprints everywhere, but especially around the corner where he’d been sleeping on his nest of rags.
At that moment, Min La understood what had happened. The red hot panic settled into a simmer in his mind as he sat with a hard thud. Sitting on the cold stone floor in a small pool of daylight, he buried his face in his hands and spent several long minutes chastising himself. He should not have ignored the sounds outside his window. He should not have slept without hiding the silver. He should not have slept in the same place two nights in a row. Of course those fearless little thieves would come looking for him. He had stolen such a great prize from them. One of them had probably seen him in the market and made a logical guess. These infuriating children were not stupid, unfortunately.
But he was, it seemed. Nearly ten years he had been struggling to survive alone. He should never have made such a careless mistake. Simmering anger gave way to the cooling power of keen self-loathing. It was, after all, in his nature to make repeated mistakes. He had been careless and reckless all his life. His carelessness had killed people he loved. And now it would kill him. Without that silver he was as good as dead. There was no way he would survive another winter in the north. He was already thinner this year than last year. Last winter frostbite had nearly taken the tips of the fingers on his left hand while he’d been sleeping in a stone box in Nŏl Noth1. He knew that he was too thin and too weak to fend off even a common cold. He would probably be dead before spring. For several long minutes he was overcome with the urge to lay quietly in the corner of his little stone house and let the cold take him sooner, at least that would spare him another long northern winter.
In time, however, the great raging storm of self-pity settled in him. He breathed deeply as the anger and panic cooled and reason returned to him. There was no time to consider if any of the rest of it was true. What was true right now — and what was most important — was that he would die without that silver. Pushing all else from his mind, he stood and charged into action.
Shoving the door aside, he hurried into the bare yard outside the little house. It was surrounded on all sides by a low wooden fence, half collapsed. The yard, muddied by the endless autumn rain, was nevertheless mostly undisturbed, given that this was such a remote and abandoned corner of the city. Because of this Min La could clearly see the trampling of small footprints that had made a path from his door, around the back of the little house, and over the fence. As he leapt over the shabby little wall, he continued to berate himself at great length. The ongoing abuse seemed to energize and focus him.
The biting edge of purpose had taken away the full, blinding force of the panic and anger. He had, while searching his house for the bag, been nearly on the verge of hot, angry tears. Had they taken just the silver from the woman’s stolen purse, he doubted he would have even been upset. But they had taken the rest of it as well. Months and months — probably years — he had been saving that silver. He was supposed to leave Sona Gen today, or at least to begin the journey. He would not let a pack of little Houseless brats pull him off that path.
Behind the little stone house was a seemingly endless interweaving of little narrow roads and similar stone houses. Most of them were occupied and their owners were already awake and going about their morning business with little concern for the skinny young man trekking furiously along the muddy allies and dirty paved roads, eyes fixed on the ground.
As quick-witted as those beggar children were, there was little they could do about the incessant autumn rain that had muddied every path between Min La’s borrowed house and wherever they had returned to. He was lucky that it hadn’t rained yet today. And he was lucky that it had rained so much recently that the mud in the packed earth alleys was still thick and sticky. The beggars’ tiny, child-sized footprints were clear in the allies, and the mud they collected there in turn marked their path along the paved roads.
As he followed the trail of mud, he found himself reaching habitually to grasp the bag across his chest which was not there. Each time the trill of panic filled him with quickening urgency. He was overcome with the notion that his very life had been taken from him and he would die if he didn’t retrieve it.
Ny-ol-NOTH
Never underestimate the will of hungry children or freezing beggars!