Heartfelt Sounds Read Free Page A

fish the purse from my bra band and open it. One gold piece. Ten bronze. Hana's savings. I hesitate.
    “Can you count, girl? Course not. Only thing you girls are good for is spreading your legs. Here.”
    He snatches the gold piece. Takes the ten bronze pieces and smiles at his work. He bites the gold piece upon his black teeth. My shoulders lower as I hide the empty purse in my bra band. I sigh. My head lowers.
    “You going to need that instrument, girl?” he asks. Touches his finger to the wood. “That's a pretty piece of equipment. Wouldn't want the Saints knowing you stole it, huh?”
    I look to the long body of the zither held tight in my arms. This was my little piece of home. My past. This was Lore and the others. My sisters. This was Yarne—my first house mother—when I looked at it in the right light. This was my happiness—a part of me.
    This was all I had to remind me of happier days.
    This was it.
    A songstress without her zither was simply a girl with a pretty voice. Nothing— nothing.
    Without it— without my zither—
    My eyes snap to his. I bite my lip. “No.” I take a step back, moving the zither to my side as I put out a hand. The palm faces him. “This—this is mine.”
    “Well that's too bad.” the man sighs, the boy at his side snaps the rope straight between his two hands. “Might as well get her, boy.”
    The child races at me, rope in hand. A knife dangles from his leather belt as he pumps his legs. It glints.
    I rise onto my toes and sprint.
    The road dashes by me. All gray. Some white. A vicious blur that zooms by. The boy is at my heels—nips and lashes with the rope. He uses it like a whip. Like he's used to this game. Chasing whores. Chasing women disenchanted with their lives.
    But I'm not one of them.
    He gains on me. The moment the corridor forks three ways, I sprint forward only to double back and take a street to my right. This slows him—but he roars. A tiny monster licks at my heels—he's huffing and puffing, panting like fire is exploding from his lungs—when, far behind him, the hooves of a horse clatter upon the stones of the street. I turn into an alleyway when a great beast whinnies, a carriage goes thundering—sliding into the squeezing walls of the alleyway as everything within it pours to the ground. The boy's father drives the wild horse as it careens onto the ground with an explosion of timber and steel. The animal screams—the boy screams with it. I hurl myself over a large wooden box beside an alleyway door and I think I've made it. I think I'm free—but a rope catches around my ankle. It snakes and tightens.
    My chest slams into the box. My zither barely missing the tumble as I hold it above my head.
    This is my only memory. My only piece of home.
    They cannot have it.
    But the boy is strong. He pulls and pulls and the father scrambles from the mess he has made with the horse and carriage. Their strength has become combined and I can do nothing as I hold the zither above my head—as my chest slams upon the ground and my teeth jitter in their sockets. My zither goes sliding across the flagstones as I cling to a stone that juts from the street.
    I scream.
    Birds leave their perches. I hear their black wings beat against the air.
    As the alleyway door is flung open. It moans on its hinges. A woman's face peers out. She couldn't have been no older than me.
    Emerald eyes glare at me—then follow the rope to my captors.
    She disappears into the doorway, only to come rushing back with a wide silver knife.
    “Get away!” she shrieks, brandishing it erratically—like a tree spurned by wind. “Let her go you damned slave catchers—I don't condone slavery here—leave her be and get away!”
    The pulling stops. I reach out to grab my zither.
    “She belongs to the Saints.” the old man shrieks back.
    “People don't belong to people.”
    When the rope slacks, I scramble up. “I'll tell Kapua you're harboring his girls! He doesn't take kindly to thieves.