Alis by Naomi Rich Page B

the house and collected their few possessions. When she came down again, Ethan was waiting for her. He took his bundle and pack, and knelt down to check the fastenings. Still shaky with fright, she said fervently, “You are good to me, Ethan. I am sorry we had so little to give you, Luke and I.”
    Ethan shrugged. “I’ve a soft spot for the lad. As for you, I wouldn’t risk myself to save you from marriage, but I’d not leave a girl to the mercy of Masters Robert and Thomas—I have heard too much of their ways.”
    He finished securing his belongings and stood up. “Come then. Let us be gone.”
    They took up their bundles and went out into the sunlit streets.

10
    T hey passed along a paved street of fine houses—merchants’ houses, Ethan said—and then crossed the grand main square. Alis would have stopped to gape, but fear of Master Bartholomew drove her on. Leaving the square, they entered a district of tradesmen’s shops—carpenters, boot and harness makers, chandlers, glove makers, taverns and pie shops, places selling lengths of cloth, hat makers, bakeries, apothecaries’ shops. She was dizzy with it all. More houses, of a modest kind, and two rows of what Ethan called charity dwellings—built for the poor by merchants hoping for the Maker’s favor, he said.
    “Do the people here worship the Maker?” Alis asked in surprise.
    “Your parents would not think so, but there are places of prayer of all kinds, though they do not follow the ways of the Communities. The world has more in it than you have been taught.”
    Alis was silent. She was beginning to feel that she knew nothing at all.
    When at length they came to the bridge, it was still too early for the boy to be there. Alis leaned on the parapet to watch the choppy water slapping the bank.
    “That way is the sea,” Ethan said, pointing. “There was a port here once, but the river’s been silting up for years. Now the seagoing ships unload onto barges downriver, on the coast.”
    She savored the smell, a muddy wetness with a tang of fish somewhere. Gulls scooped the air above the water and dived suddenly at invisible prey. Their harsh cries mingled with the voices of boatmen and with the more distant sounds of cargo being unloaded at the dock farther down.
    For a little while, Alis was content to be away from the tavern, but as time went on and there was no sign of the boy, she became nervous. Master Bartholomew might, even now, be on their track. The open spaces and the sunlight, which had been such a pleasure at first, now seemed threatening.
    It began to grow cooler. People came and went across the river. Still the boy did not come. Ethan said nothing, his face gloomy, but just as they were giving up hope, a ragged child sidled out from behind a couple of passing workmen. He was no more than ten years old, small, and very dirty. He stopped in front of Ethan, saying in a hoarse voice, “Man for Joe?”
    Ethan said, “Joel. A tall, fair man called Joel, or Jojo maybe. You know him?”
    The boy did not answer but jerked his head in the direction of the bridge and held out his hand. Ethan said, “Where’s the other boy—the one I spoke to this morning? Did he send you?”
    The child nodded. Ethan reached into a pocket and produced a single copper coin that he held out. The child looked at it but he did not move to take it.
    Ethan said, “You’ll get another one afterward. You understand? When we find Joel.”
    Almost before he had finished speaking, the child had snatched the coin and shoved it away inside a tattered shirt that had once been white. Then he set off at a trot across the bridge without looking back. Ethan and Alis followed him.
     
     
    On the far side, the boy led them along the embankment, stopping from time to time so that they did not lose sight of him. Blocks of mean-looking houses and shops, separated by alleyways, faced them on the other side of the roadway. On one corner was an inn with a faded sign showing a crudely