A Hatred Most Pure novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: First Frost

The Urekai who had worked the Saltmarsh docks came home in the spring, in wagons.

Their children slept on their bundles.

By the next autumn the hold had a new wing, a school, and a barrel of sea water in the yard.

A freed docker had carried it up the north road himself, with a sack of shells.

He had promised it to a five-year-old.

The little boy had put his whole face in the water and come up spluttering.

"It tastes of salt," he told me, outraged.

"It's the sea."

"Is the real one bigger?"

"A great deal," I said. "I'll take you."

That was how I knew I was staying.

I had said it without thinking, and no one in the yard had looked surprised.

On the night of the first frost, a year after the harvest at the Gull and Anchor, the whole hold gathered in the great hall.

Ansel had asked for it.

He stood on the dais in his shirtsleeves, with no glove, and the fire behind him.

I sat at the foot of the steps with Bram's daughter on one side and the cook on the other.

"I read my terms to you once," he said. "In this room. Some of you threw stones."

Nobody laughed, but a few people shifted.

"I'm going to read my wrongs now, because it's only fair, and because Cora said I would have to."

He unfolded a sheet of paper.

His left hand held it steady.

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