Two days later, Cian smelled smoke.
Real woodsmoke. Not the damp smolder of a forest fire, but the cozy, resinous scent of a chimney.
He emerged from the tree line and saw a small hamlet. It wasn't a village like Blackwood. It was just a cluster of four houses and a large, fortified inn sitting at a crossroads. A sign hung over the road: The Broken Wheel.
Carts were parked in the yard. Horses were tied to the rail. He could hear laughter.
Cian's mouth watered so hard it hurt.
He stumbled toward the inn. He hadn't eaten anything but dandelion greens and a handful of bitter acorns in three days. He was lightheaded, his vision tunneling at the edges.
He reached the edge of the inn's yard. A stable boy was brushing a horse near the barn. He looked up, saw Cian, and wrinkled his nose.
Cian knew what he looked like. He was covered in mud. His undershirt was torn and stained brown. He was wearing boots that clearly didn't belong to him. He looked like a madman.
"Please," Cian rasped, stepping forward. "Work. I can work. Chopping wood. Mucking stalls."
The stable boy didn't even put down his brush. "Master don't hire drifters. Get on."
"I'm hungry," Cian said. The shame of begging was gone. Hunger had eaten it. "Just crusts. Anything."
"I said get on!" the boy shouted, grabbing a pitchfork. "Before I set the dogs on you!"
Dogs.
Cian flinched. The memory of the Wargs was a physical blow. He backed away, hands raised.
"I'm going. I'm going."
He retreated to the road. But he didn't leave. He couldn't. The smell of roasting meat coming from the inn was an invisible chain holding him there.
He circled around the back of the building.
The kitchen door was closed, but next to it was a pile of refuse. The midden heap.
It was a mound of ash, potato peelings, bones, and broken crockery. Flies buzzed over it, sluggish in the cold air.
Cian stared at it.
I am not a dog, he told himself.
His stomach cramped, doubling him over.
He looked around. No one was watching.
He crept forward. He dug his hands into the pile. The ash was still warm. He pushed aside slimy cabbage leaves.
He found a half-eaten turnip. A chicken carcass with gristle still on the bone. A heel of bread, soggy with grease.
He grabbed the bread. He wiped the ash off on his sleeve and shoved it into his mouth.
It tasted of ash and pork fat. It was divine.
"Hey! Vermin!"
The kitchen door banged open. A large woman with a red face and a ladle in her hand stood there.
Cian froze, the chicken bone in his hand.
"Get out of my trash!" she roared, winding up to throw the ladle.
Cian didn't wait. He scrambled over the low stone wall, dropping the bone but keeping the bread in his mouth. He ran into the tall grass of the field beyond.
"And stay out!" she screamed after him.
Cian ran until his legs gave out. He collapsed in a ditch a mile down the road.
He lay there, panting, clutching the soggy piece of bread. He finished it in two bites.
He licked the grease from his fingers.
He felt a strange sensation in his chest. It wasn't shame. He had left shame at the gallows tree.
It was anger. A cold, hard little kernel of hate.
They had food they threw away. They fed the pigs better than him.
One day, Cian thought, closing his eyes. One day I will walk into that inn and I will buy the whole roasted pig. And I will watch them smile at me.
He curled up in the ditch, the stolen calories warming his blood.
He was a rat. But rats survived. And rats remembered.