Good morning, lovelies!
Oh, look! Another scene I get to delete from the Demons' Nest manuscript. Rather than being repetitive, this one provides context that's ultimately unnecessary. We know Jane has asthma because she gets a very ill-timed attack in the middle of a riot. Margaret barely shows up later in the book, and the harsh nun, not at all. We already know that the town dislikes and suspects Jane because of other instances where she's shunned and excluded. I originally wrote this as a way to give a "Citadel POV" of what people think of the new chimera-human town, and how views are slowly changing. But again, we're getting a lot of that in the background anyway.
Who is Jane, you may ask? She's the wife of one Markus Brown, the guy who owned the textile mill and was caught and executed as a Dove--by Ormus Claude. He and Jane were good friends of Riley, and in fact Jane is still friends with Riley and still active in the Doves. At this point in the book, she's established a smuggling ring, helping get more supplies to Sanctuary and also getting some nifty stuff back.
TW: mentions of infant mortality and implied domestic violence.
Enjoy!
Jane’s aching fingers trembled as she lifted the stepina cigarette to her lips. The next breath was easier, her lungs loosening ever so slightly and allowing her to actually drag in oxygen.
She’d had asthma for almost twenty years at this point. It never got easier. Neither did taking the medicine. Even sitting on her thin pallet of a bed, she could feel her head get lighter, the dizziness warping the edges of her vision.
“What’d I say about smoking inside?”
“Huh?” Jane asked, wondering why her mother was yelling at her now. She never smoked…
Right. Confusion was another side effect that she had to work through. That wasn’t her mother standing over her, but Sister Vanessa, the head of the women’s shelter. The fifty-something-year-old woman—a widow, like so many others here—was never seen without her pale blue, near-white habit and ankle-length dress. She made the Halls of Ashes—the basements beneath every temple where the dead were stored—seem like a cheerful place.
“Asthma medicine,” Jane said, taking another pull. She had to close her eyes against the dizziness, and still felt the world churn around her. But she was still breathing, and that was what mattered. Every breath was a victory, made all the sweeter by how many people wanted her to stop.
“You can’t smoke in here,” Vanessa said, coming closer. Jane opened her eyes in time to see the nun reach for the cigarette.
She pulled back, curling her hands protectively around it. Ash and cinders sprinkled against her skin, but she had long grown used to that. “I need it to breathe.”
“Do it outside.”
“Dizziness. I’ll collapse.” She’d only had to do that once, even as a younger woman. Markus had commissioned a cushioned chair for her, more of a chaise, that he set up by the biggest window in their house. In spring and summer, when they were open, she’d blow the smoke outside. In winter, the chill helped ground her, cutting through the dizziness and making the side effects easier to bear.
“Outside. Now.”
“Vanessa, please.” That was Margaret, one of the younger women. “We’ll move her to the window if it bothers you that much.”
“Absolutely not. We let one woman start smoking in here, they’ll all do it,” Vanessa snapped.
“It’s medication, not a leisure.”
“No exceptions! Unless she wants to be booted out for breaking the rules.”
Jane took another pull, biting back a curse. Her knees were jelly.
Margaret sighed, but turned to Jane. “Come on. I’ll help you out. There’s a chair by the front door you can use.”
Jane smiled, letting the younger woman help her out of bed. Margaret was in her twenties, having married her childhood sweetheart when she was sixteen. The child she’d birthed at seventeen had, unfortunately, gotten sick and died. A trail of miscarriages and stillbirths had followed, until her husband had gone fishing in the Flooded Forest and not returned, a casualty to creature, chimera, or cold.
Maybe that was for the best. Margaret kept to herself, and everyone kept away from Jane, but she’d still heard the whispers. Bruises were difficult to hide in a town as close-knit as Citadel. Most didn’t even bother.
The two made it outside. Like most of Citadel, Margaret was from the Farmers’ Ring, so she had no problem supporting Jane’s weight. The younger frowned as she set Jane down on the chair outside. “You’ve gotten skinnier.”
Jane grunted, tucking her shawl around herself as the early winter wind raked across her skin, snow drifting up against her boots. Food had gotten difficult for even her pockets, and she had to save what she had for the stepina. The shelter gave her meals, not medicine.
At the walls, the bells rang. Jane took another drag, her lungs relaxed and open enough for her to ask a proper question: “Who was on the posts?”
“Couple of deserters running for Demons’ Nest.”
Margaret leaned against the wall, watching the barren street. The shelter was connected to the Temple of Motherhood, and was surrounded almost entirely by skinny, debilitating homes that had originally been a single story for a single family, but had had a second story hastily built on top in recent years. A decade ago, it would’ve been one family per story. But these days, there was usually as many as two or three families per story. One house down the street had seven families squeezed inside of it, with a total of thirty-six people. And they still could barely afford to feed themselves and pay the property taxes.
She and Markus had never had that problem. He had owned the textile mill, making and selling the clothes worn by half the town, and that had allowed them to live in a two-story building all to themselves.
They had paid their taxes. They’d given twice the usual tithe to their Temple—not having any children to worry about had allowed them to even triple it some years. And they’d both risked their lives to become Doves, hoping to transform Citadel from within and make it a kinder, more compassionate place.
It hadn’t been enough. Jane didn’t know if it was natural consequence or the Face of Wrath, but her current circumstances certainly felt like punishment. Perhaps she deserved it, but Markus hadn’t. His only crime had been looking after her and protecting her.
“Have you…”
Jane looked up at Margaret, her cigarette almost gone. “Yes?”
The younger woman lowered her voice: “Have you considered going to Demons’ Nest?”
Jane almost laughed. She finished off her cigarette, happily pulling in a full breath. “I’ve heard it’s called Sanctuary. And no, not really. I’d never make it.”
“You think the demons would kill you?”
“I think I’m a sixty-year-old former schoolteacher with asthma. Nobody would have to kill me, my body will do that all by itself. Maybe with a little nudge from the elements. I don’t think the demons would hurt anyone coming to them in good faith,” Jane said. Here, she had to be careful. Anyone who said chimera instead of demon was immediately suspect. “I’ve heard the scouts’ reports. They’ve seen the Claude girl alive and well, as well as that fisherman that went out with his wife. Plus there’s that spotted demon who seems friendly enough.”
“Do you think they’ll last the winter?” Margaret asked.
Jane shrugged. “I think at this point, they have the same chances we do.”