Wolfless Luna's Royal Return novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Wolfless Row

Elspeth reaches Kingsford at night, pays the gate with soup and gets a corner of Stall 9; her hands light the pot gold.

I told Jory the truth, because he deserved one.

"You are not a dud. Your father is a fool, and fools say fool things."

He thought about it for a while with his face against my neck.

"Okay," he said, and he did not ask again.

We left Vandeleur before dark, as ordered.

I carried my grandmother's iron pot in one hand and Jory in the other arm, and I wore my own cloak, the only thing in that house that was mine.

No one said goodbye.

An old wolf at the gate tucked a loaf of bread into my sack and looked away fast.

The road to Kingsford took all night.

Jory slept most of it on my back, and I walked until my feet bled into my boots.

Every few miles the burn on my shoulder flared.

I kept walking.

Kingsford's gate stood open at dawn, a stone arch wide enough for three wagons.

A tollkeeper sat in a booth beside it, a heavy man with a ledger and a cold.

"Name and pack," he said without looking up.

"Elspeth Chenoweth. No pack."

His pen stopped.

"Wolfless?"

"Yes."

"Then it's Wolfless Row, and the entry fee is a silver."

I had two copper pennies and half a loaf.

I set the iron pot on his counter and said, "I'll pay you in soup."

He looked at me like I'd lost my mind.

I didn't wait for permission.

I had a small paper of dried onion, a heel of the bread, and a handful of thyme I'd picked from the roadside.

His booth had a little stove for his tea.

I put water in my pot, set it on the stove, and let it simmer while he watched me with his mouth open.

Jory woke up and stared at the tollkeeper.

"Hello," he said. "She makes good soup."

"I'm sure," said the tollkeeper.

The smell filled the booth, onion and thyme and something under it, warm and green.

His cold was so bad his nose had gone raw.

I ladled him a cup and set it in his hand.

"Drink."

He drank it, scowling, and then he stopped scowling.

He breathed in through his nose, slowly.

"Well," he said. "That's odd."

He waved me through without taking a coin.

Wolfless Row was a crooked lane of stalls at the far end of the Royal Market, under a banner of faded grey cloth.

The wolves had the big stone halls near the palace road.

The wolfless got a muddy strip behind the fish sellers.

I stood at the mouth of the lane with my pot and my son and no idea where to put either.

"You look like a woman who's about to drop," said a voice.

She was short and round, fifty-something, with flour to her elbows and a grey bun skewered with a wooden spoon.

"Hettie Trengrove," she said. "Pies. Stall seven. You're looking at the empty corner of nine, and it's been empty two winters because the man who had it got a wolf at forty and left."

"A wolf at forty?"

"Late bloomers happen. It's the only hope we all share." She grinned. "Rent is two coppers a week. I'll front you the first one."

I almost cried then, over two coppers.

I set Jory on an upturned crate, and Hettie gave him a hot pie before I could stop her.

By dusk I had a fire laid in the corner under a patched awning, and my pot hung over it on a hook Hettie had found.

Jory slept in a nest of sacks under the counter.

I had no meat, so I made broth from onion ends and bones Hettie spared me from her pie suet.

I stood there stirring it in the dark, and my palms ached from the heat.

Then I noticed the pot.

The broth was glowing.

A faint gold, like a lamp seen through a curtain, rising off the water in slow threads.

I lifted my hands.

The glow was coming from my palms.

"Mama?"

Jory was awake and kneeling at the edge of the counter, his eyes huge.

"Your hands are warm like the sun," he whispered.

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