The Price {Completed}

Chapter Thirty-Two

Rachel knew the safe times to walk on the streets. The soldiers apparently only made their rounds to gather young men to their fold at certain times of the day, which Rachel learned from a friend in their ranks. I didn't ask her about her contacts, and she didn't offer. I only knew that she slipped out of the Wellington at dawn, and returned two hours later with supplies and a lead on a job that would gladly take both of us.

"Did they say what we'd be doing?" I asked, taking a bite of the bread she'd brought with her.

"Not really. Just told us to be at the headquarters at noon. Which means we should head out soon, if we want to walk there in time."

I frowned but didn't complain. Rachel's allegiance with the Vigilant Men made it easier to exist in the city, but I knew better than to question anything. She might have accepted my offer to stick together, but that didn't mean I knew any more about her changeable moods than I ever did.

"Once we've shown that you're a good worker, I'll have to declare you as one of my household. Part of the factor of how much we're paid depends on how many we have to feed, so if we want enough to fill that little mouth of yours, they'll need to know that you're with me." She cut me a look, an eyebrow raised. "Unless, of course, you want to join the Vigilant Men yourself and help the Cause."

I shook my head. "I'm fine how I am," I said. My fist clenched unconsciously in my lap, and I winced at the dull ache that ran down my palm. Glancing down I saw a thin red tear across my skin where Ferdinand's hand had been torn from mine. I quickly closed my fist again.

Rachel packed us a dinner and we walked the long miles to headquarters in the center of the city. It was nothing more than a tall building filled with soldiers and citizens with their flowers on proud display. Banners hung everywhere, singing the praises of liberty and the virtues of those who fought for their brothers and sisters in the Vigilant Men army.

Rachel signed papers and submitted them to a woman with a strict face and a coat that had obviously not been hers only a week ago. She kept glancing at me and whispering to Rachel, but no one approached me as I waited patiently by the wall.

It took Rachel five minutes to get all the details about our new jobs, and then we were off. I followed her without thinking much about it, until we'd crossed into the city and bent our steps toward the easternmost sector. The bankers and butchers, those with wealth but no social standing, had lived in the tidy and tall homes that lined the streets. The proximity to the border of the city made it a dangerous place to be in, however. Soldiers from Lenotskaya had no choice but to besiege the city from the eastern end, as it was the only section that bordered with their own city. Prest, on the western side, made the factories uncomfortable with their own skirmishes.

I slowed my steps as we walked through the torn up streets, my mind flashing back to a time in my childhood when I'd been in such a place before. The smell of smoke hung heavy in the air, and burnt out shells of buildings lay in black skeletal remains. Abandoned barricades, only half dismantled, clogged the cobblestone streets. The streets on the East Sector had been battlefields, and there was no telling when the tides might change and the fighting swing back around to where Rachel and I stopped under a ripped awning.

"We're to find where the front lines are, and ask the Brothers where they've been dumping the bodies." She screwed up her lips and narrowed her eyes as she scanned what we could see of the skyline. Smoke and flocks of birds usually marked the areas where the Vigilant fought off the foreign king's men.

"Why do we need to know that?" I asked, rubbing my arms up and down as the air suddenly became frigid.

"Our job, Nadia," Rachel said, nearly rolling her eyes. She pointed to a place a few streets over where a thin line of black smoke stretched into the heavy winter sky. "Let's try there."