Things Taken

TW: Descriptions of abuse as a child and an adult.
 
Nel sat downstairs with a mug of tea in the wee hours of the morning. The rest of the house was quiet in the deep slumber of Bogdan and now seven children, but her worried thoughts would not leave her long enough to let her do the same.
 
She had broken the rules—twice now that Philippe would know of. Accepting Lord Esch’s food donations would be the easier trespass to explain. She could simply tell the truth—it had surprised her and she couldn’t think of a way to send him away in that moment without raising more questions than was good for the Organization. That was a sin of incompetence, not disloyalty. At least, she hoped Philippe would see it that way.
 
The loans were another story. It undercut the loan sharks, gave people a way out of the Warrens and out from Syndicate control, and worst of all, she hadn’t asked permission after he’d been so good to her about the school. And she has no good excuse. The truth was that she hadn’t asked because she knew he’d have said no—or worse—taken the project from her and made it into something that served the interests of the Syndicate, like he’d done with the school. The truth was that she hated the Syndicate and what it stood for and she wanted to create something that didn’t belong to them. That kind of disloyalty was lethal.
 
She didn’t believe he would kill her, but she sat up late wondering what he would take.
 
They always took something, the powers that be, when they were angry, offended, disappointed, or even just bored.
 
With Ama Galina, back in Ruskovich, it had been food, water, warmth, and light as she locked the bloodied and beaten objects of her wrath in the cold dark cellar for days on end.
 
In prison it had been dignity, as that hated guard had no shortage of sadistic games designed to humiliate prisoners for real or imagined defiance.
 
Marlene had taken the most direct approach and taken away unbroken bones, and, as a couple of gaps in Nel’s smile and a missing pinky finger on her left paw testified, actual pieces of minions who’d angered her.
 
That did not seem like Philippe’s style. He had a hard edge to him for sure, but he was fínese, not a hammer like Marlene. And there was much he could take—the school, the job that let her protect her friend and give her family a safe house with running water, his assurance that he wouldn’t try to make her hurt people. She would gladly lose another finger or tooth before any of those things.
 
And he would certainly take away his good opinion of her, his friendship, such as it was. She knew he used her. But he’d also saved her life and spoke to her like she was a person. He didn’t have to do either of those things and she was in his debt. If she was honest with herself it was for that reason, not strategy, that she still protected him from the SOTUG.
 
She wracked her brain thinking of what she could offer him to appease him, but came up empty. She could offer to do a job for free, but he already had that—after all putting labor towards a debt she could never pay off was the same thing, and that was the case with the school. They both knew she’d never finish paying it off and just pretended otherwise in a courteous game of make-believe with each other. He pretended to be her friend and she pretended to believe him. It beat the alternative. But when a person owns your time, labor, and body, there is nothing to offer them that they don’t already have.
 
So instead, she stayed up late and prayed hard. She prayed to Fodla that her family wouldn’t have to leave their home. She prayed to Sephira that Cardinal would remain safe, with or without her there to protect her. She prayed to Aesthene that the school would remain. And she prayed to Eosphorus that the loan project would continue. Finally she prayed to Ellowyn to give her courage to refuse to go back to breaking legs for the Syndicate and to face whatever would come, then she fell asleep at the kitchen table.