lose nothing by staying here. If they do, you gain something. A safe place to stay until you can do what you need to do.”
“Running is better,” Jack said. “I can stay ahead of them, running. I just need supplies and the horse.”
Henry shook his head. “What do you have to trade for them? That horse is the only one we have on the farm. It’s the way I take the little spare food I have to market. It’s the way I get to talk to the outside world.”
“I have this sword,” Jack said.
Henry smiled. “Is that a threat or an offer, boy?”
He sounded like he wasn’t going to be impressed no matter which it was.
“You’re not going to let me have the horse, are you?” Jack asked.
Henry tilted his head to one side. “A month.”
“What?”
“That’s what my horse will cost you. A month’s work. There are things around the farm I’m not strong enough to do anymore, and while Dahlia likes to pretend that she can handle everything, it’s too much work for one person. So stay here for a month and work, and you can have the horse, along with all the supplies that will fit on it.”
Jack shook his head. “I need to keep moving.”
“You need to keep running, you mean?” Henry laughed at that. “You want to keep running, I can spare you a couple of days’ supplies, but you can go without the horse. How long do you think you’ll last like that?”
“I don’t know,” Jack admitted.
“I do, and it’s not long enough to finish those supplies.” Henry started to walk back towards the ladder, and Jack could feel the weight of his sword in its scabbard. It would be so easy to just kill the old man now.
“Of course,” Henry said, not turning around, “you’ve got another choice. You could always kill me and steal the horse. You wouldn’t even have to go back to the house to hurt Dahlia. Although a man who would do the first probably wouldn’t have any qualms about the second. You wouldn’t have to work, and you could keep running. You could just take what you want. Or you could work for it, for a month.”
Henry waited for a second, presenting the target of his back, then climbed back down the ladder, leaving Jack in the hayloft.
He stayed there through the night. At some point, Dahlia came by with blankets, but Jack barely noticed when she came in. Eventually, Jack must have slept, but he didn’t remember doing it. Time passed in the dark, and Jack held his sword across his knees, illuminated only by the moonlight spilling in through the window. A rat scuttled somewhere in the dark and Jack threw the sword on instinct, plucking it from the rodent’s body a second later. He’d done it all without thinking about it, almost too fast to follow.
“What kind of man am I?” Jack asked in the dark. There weren’t any answers waiting for him there. It occurred to him that the horse sat below, and he probably wouldn’t even need to hurt Henry now to take it. Briefly, Jack crept to the top of the ladder, then went back to his sleeping place and sat there once more.
He waited until the sun was well over the horizon before he went back to the house. Henry was waiting for him by the door, while Dahlia was visible in the farmyard, tending to a small flock of chickens.
“All right,” Jack said. “One month. I’ll work.”
“Yes,” Henry assured him. “You’ll definitely do that.”
Chapter 2
The new beam for the barn was a thing of dark oak, as thick around as a man’s waist and longer than Jack could have reached stretched full length. There was a socket in the end, cut by Henry to fit in with an almost identical one he’d cut in a cross beam. Jack grunted as he struggled to haul the beam into place, sweating as he lifted, the weight of it almost greater than he could manage. For a moment, it seemed like he wouldn’t be able to lift it at all. After his time running, he was simply too weak. He let it fall to the floor in the barn. Beside him, Henry looked on with an even expression.
“Are you planning on leaving us?” he asked.
“No,” Jack said, the way he’d said it all the other times the old man had asked. “I’m just taking a rest.”
“We can rest when the job’s done,” Henry said. “Or can you not lift a simple piece of wood my daughter could haul up?”
That was enough to sting Jack into movement. He lifted the end of the beam, getting it up to his shoulder as he crouched. Steadily, he drove with his legs, ignoring the way his lower back complained at the movement. He wasn’t going to let this old man embarrass him like that. He wasn’t going to embarrass himself.
He lifted, and the beam slid slowly upwards until it was level with the slot Henry had cut. For a second or two it looked like it wouldn’t fit, but Jack gave a last shout of effort and heaved it into place. The beam locked in neatly, like it had always been meant to be there.
“We’ll make a carpenter out of you yet,” Henry said. It was as close to praise as he ever got.
Jack had learned that the hard way over the past weeks. Whatever he did, Henry wanted more from him. Jack rose at dawn every day and didn’t get to sleep until the sun was long fallen. In between, he worked hard. Hard enough that his muscles ached with it. Hard enough that for the first few days, he’d been convinced that the old man was planning to work him to death long before the month was up.
Slowly though, Jack’s body had started to harden under the effort. He didn’t know what had happened to him before his run, but the combination of it and his panicked flight from the city had left him weak as a newborn kitten. Now though, his body felt like it could move more smoothly, and the aches were less after each day’s work.
“Let me see your hands,” Henry said.
Jack frowned, but held them out like a child half expecting to take a stick across them.
“Yes,” the old man continued. “They’re hardening up nicely. You didn’t have many callouses when you came here. You had soft hands. An officer’s hands.”
Jack pulled his hands back, putting them by his sides as though that might hide them. “You know something about me, don’t you?”
It wasn’t the first time he’d asked it, but it was the first time the old man gave him anything more than just knowing smile and a shrug.
“Yes, I know something about you.”
“Then who am I?” Jack asked. “What am I doing here?”
Henry shrugged again. “You already know the answer to that. You’re running. What more do you need to know?”
That wasn’t good enough though. Jack knew that he was running, yes, but the rest of his past seemed as locked away as ever. “I should be able to remember.”
Henry shook his head. “You’re trying to force things. I told you before, it’s better if it happens naturally. It takes-”
“Time, I know. Just tell me.” Jack flexed his hands. “You know something, so what is it? You’ve dropped enough hints, talking about my hands. Do you know who I am?”
A note of compassion entered Henry’s expression. “I don’t know exactly who you are, no. But there are some things it’s easy to work out. Do you remember the phrase you said when you showed up here?”
“Let no scrap of information be lost,” Jack replied promptly. He had no problem remembering anything since he’d crawled out of the mass grave in the capital. It was everything before that moment that seemed cut off, shut away like it was on the other side of a locked door. Occasionally, fragments would creep through, like snatches of conversation coming through that door, but the door itself stayed shut.
“That