Well of Sorrows Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the sling.
    A gust of air, leaden with the weight of rain, pushed against his face. Shoving the anger down, but not the anticipation, Colin closed his eyes and bowed his head, murmuring a quick prayer of thanks to Diermani for the kill, as his mother had taught him, then gathered up the limp body of the prairie dog and placed it into the satchel at his side that contained the two rabbits he’d caught that morning. Shading his eyes, he squinted up at the sun, then stood and scanned the horizon to the east.
    “Time to head back,” he said to himself.
    But he didn’t move.
    The breeze brushed his hair back from his eyes, the scent of rain stronger now. In the distance, he could see the leading edge of the storm, white clouds at the forefront, darker clouds behind. It would arrive within the hour.
    He sighed, removed his sling and stowed it in a separate pocket of the satchel, and headed back to the west, trudging up the incline where he’d waited for the prairie dogs and down the far side. The satchel bounced against his side as he moved, as he picked up his pace.
    Half an hour later—the wind gusting at his back with enough force to flatten the grass around him, the clouds beginning to blot out the sun overhead—Colin came upon the outermost farms still close enough to be considered part of Portstown. He paused as he drew alongside the first. The house had yet to be completed, but the barn, twice as large as the house, had been raised the week before in the span of two days. A large tract of land had already been carved out of the grassland, freshly plowed, and if Colin shaded his eye he could see a team of horses in the distance, digging out another stretch of field. A woman worked in the garden plot nearest the house, a basket tucked in tight to her hip. Two children roughhoused around her.
    She stood as soon as she noticed Colin, glared at him, face set with hostility.
    Colin spat to one side—a habit his father had picked up in the past months whenever those in Portstown were mentioned—and continued on his way.
    He entered Lean-to with the first fat drops of rain pattering down from the sky. Men and women cursed and shot black looks at the clouds, then tucked pots and baskets under their arms, shielding them from the rain as they ducked into huts and tents, flaps falling closed behind them. One woman bellowed, “Come here you little terrors!” and rounded up the last of her four children, ushering them into a shack made from pieces of discarded boat hulls and driftwood.
    Colin ducked into his parent’s hut to the first grumble of thunder. He squatted and pulled a shutter of wood over the front of the opening before letting the blanket drop, then turned.
    And halted. His parents had guests.
    “They’ve shut us out completely!” Paul spat, then took a pull from an aleskin. He shoved it at Sam, who wiped the mouthpiece on his shirt before taking his own pull.
    “What is he talking about, Sam?” Colin’s mother asked in disgust, motioning Colin toward her where she worked near the fire, taking his satchel.
    Colin settled down next to his mother, away from the table where his father, Paul, Sam, and Shay sat on various crates and stools, a game of Crook and Row set out before them. Sam glared at his cards, then threw one before answering, Shay snorting as he picked up the tossed card.
    “The Proprietor has banned anyone from Lean-to from the docks. We can no longer seek work there or at the warehouses. It’s as if we have the plague!”
    “He can’t do that.”
    “Oh, he didn’t officially ‘ban’ us,” Paul said, his words slurred with more than derision. “No, no, he’s too crafty for that.”
    Shay played a stretch of four and discarded. “The bastard has sent out the Armory, men just over from Andover, sent by the Family. They’ve started patrolling the docks.”
    “I don’t understand it,” Ana said, knife slicing through the first rabbit with rough jerks as she began gutting and cleaning