The Tyrant's Pet novel · Chapter 12 of 32

Chapter 12: Saltgate

We left the Coil four days later and reached Saltgate at dusk, with six wagons and nine women.

Agatha had picked them herself.

The woman who sewed. The woman with flour on her arms. The newest tribute, who'd refused to be left behind and had brought her jam.

Two stayed in the Coil to watch the chancellor's door.

The crown rode with us in a hatbox under Agatha's seat.

"Somebody has to keep it warm," she said.

The old customs house stood on the riverbank at the edge of town.

It was all broken shutters and pigeons.

The town came out to look at us.

Thin faces. Gray lips. Children with black under their fingernails.

Nobody said a word when the Emperor got down from his horse.

They just looked at the ground and backed away.

"Well," Agatha said. "That's a warm welcome."

We swept for two days.

I scrubbed floors next to women who'd been sent to die, and none of us stopped talking once.

The woman with flour on her arms told me how she'd caught her Alpha's brother selling grain meant for widows.

The woman who sewed told me she'd seen a border captain take a bribe, and she'd laughed in his face.

"That's why they sent me," she said. "Not the seeing. The laughing."

On the third morning, I opened the doors.

Nobody came.

The townspeople stood across the road in a crowd and stared at the building.

"They think it's a trick," the newest tribute whispered.

"Everyone thinks I'm a trick," I said.

I took a bucket and walked out past them to the town well in the square.

The water in it was the color of strong tea gone bad.

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