they would be indentured as apprentices or servants, soldiers, or worse. There was no real expectation that they would ever be free, because even those genuinely looking for an apprentice would only pay a pittance; not enough to ever pay off their debt.
And the truth was that Kate had little patience for sewing or cooking, etiquette or haberdashery.
“We could find some trader and try to apprentice ourselves,” Kate suggested.
Sophia shook her head.
“Even if we could find one willing to take us on, they would want to hear from our families beforehand. When we couldn’t produce a father to vouch for us, they would know what we were.”
Kate had to admit that her sister had a point.
“Well then, we could sign on as barge hands, and see the rest of the country.”
Even as she said it, she knew that was probably just as ludicrous as her first idea. A barge captain would still ask questions, and probably any hunters of escaped orphans would watch the barges for those trying to escape. They certainly couldn’t rely on someone else to help them, not after what had happened in the library, with the only man in this city she had considered a friend.
What a naïve fool she had been.
Sophia seemed to get the enormity of what faced them as well. She was looking away with a wistful expression on her face.
“If you could do anything,” Sophia asked, “if you could go anywhere, where would you go?”
Kate hadn’t thought about it in those terms.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I never thought past just surviving the day.”
Sophia fell silent for a long time. Kate could feel her thinking.
Finally, Sophia spoke.
“If we try to do anything normal, there are going to be just as many obstacles as if we shoot for the biggest things in the world. Maybe even more, because people expect people like us to settle for less. So what do you want, more than anything?”
Kate thought about that.
“I want to find our parents,” Kate said, realizing it as she spoke it.
She could feel the flash of pain that ran through Sophia with those words.
“Our parents are dead,” Sophia said. She sounded so certain that Kate wanted to ask her again what had happened all those years ago. “I’m sorry, Kate. That wasn’t what I meant.”
Kate sighed bitterly.
“I don’t want anyone to control what I do again,” Kate said, picking the thing that she wanted almost as much as their parents’ return. “I want to be free, truly free.”
“I want that as well,” Sophia said. “But there are very few truly free people in this city. The only ones really are…”
She looked out across the city and, following her gaze, Kate could see that she was looking out toward the palace, with its shining marble and its gilt decorations.
Kate could feel what she was thinking.
“I don’t think being a servant at the palace would make you free,” Kate said.
“I wasn’t thinking about being a servant,” Sophia snapped. “What if…what if we could just walk in there and be one of them? What if we could persuade them all that we were? What if we could marry some rich man, have connections at court?”
Kate didn’t laugh, but only because she could tell how serious her sister was about the whole idea. If she could have anything in the world, the last thing Kate would want would be to walk into the palace and become a great lady, to marry some man who told her what to do.
“I don’t want to depend on anyone else for my freedom,” Kate said. “The world has taught us one thing, and one thing only: we must depend on ourselves. Only on ourselves. That way we can control everything that happens to us. And we don’t have to trust anyone. We have to learn to take care of ourselves. To sustain ourselves. To live off the land. To learn to hunt. To farm. Anything where we don’t rely on anyone else. And we have to amass great weapons and become great fighters, so if anyone comes to take what is ours, we can kill them.”
And suddenly, Kate realized.
“We need to leave this city,” she urged her sister. “It’s filled with dangers for us. We need to live out beyond the city, in the country, where few people live and where no one will be able to harm us.”
The more she spoke about it, the more she realized that it was the right thing to do. It was her dream. Right then, Kate wanted nothing more than to run for the gates of the city, out into the open spaces beyond.
“And when we learn to fight,” Kate added, “when we become bigger and stronger and have the finest swords and crossbows and daggers, we will come back here and kill everyone who hurt us in the orphanage.”
She felt Sophia’s hands on her shoulder.
“You can’t talk like that, Kate. You can’t just talk about killing people like it’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” Kate spat. “It’s what they deserve.”
Sophia shook her head.
“That is primitive,” Sophia said. “There are better ways to survive. And better ways to get revenge. Besides, I don’t want to just survive, like some peasant in the woods. What is the point of life then? I want to live.”
Kate wasn’t sure about that, but she didn’t say anything.
They walked on in silence for a little way, and Kate guessed that Sophia was as caught up in her dream as Kate was. They walked along streets filled with people who seemed to know what they were doing with their lives, who seemed filled with a sense of purpose, and to Kate, it was unfair that it should be so easy for them. Then again, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe they had as little choice as she or Sophia would have had if they’d stayed in the orphanage.
Ahead, the city sprawled beyond gates that had probably been there for hundreds of years. The space beyond was filled with houses now, pushed right up against the walls in a way that probably made them useless. There was a wide open space beyond, though, where several farmers were driving their livestock on the way to slaughter, sheep and geese, ducks and even a few cows. There were wagons of goods there too, waiting to come into the city.
And beyond that, the horizon lay filled with woods. Woods that Kate longed to escape to.
Kate saw the carriage before Sophia did. It was pushing its way through the waiting vehicles, the occupants obviously assuming that they had the right to be first into the city proper. Maybe they did. The carriage was gilded and carved, with a family crest on the side that would probably have made sense if the nuns had thought such things worth teaching. The silk curtains were closed, but Kate saw one twitch open, revealing a woman within looking out from under an elaborate bird’s-head mask.
Kate felt filled with envy and disgust. How could a few live so well?
“Look at them,” Kate said. “They’re probably on their way to a ball or a masquerade. They’ve probably never had to worry about being hungry in their lives.”
“No, they haven’t,” Sophia agreed. But she sounded thoughtful, perhaps even admiring.
Then Kate realized what her sister was thinking. She turned to her, appalled.
“We can’t just follow them,” Kate said.
“Why not?” her sister shot back. “Why not try to get what we want?”
Kate didn’t have an answer for her. She didn’t want to tell Sophia that it wouldn’t work. Couldn’t work. That it wasn’t the way the world fit together. They would take one look at them and know they were orphans, know they were peasants. How could they ever hope to blend into a world such as that?
Sophia was the elder sister; she was supposed to know all this