The Theft of Sunlight by Intisar Khanani (story reading .TXT) 📕

stationed there who adds them to the ever-growing wall, and then go to fetch more. The youngest boy can be no more than seven. They are thin, their worn tunics and pants hanging off their limbs and their feet crusted with mud—though they are certainly better clothed than many of the children I have seen on the streets. They work silently, uncomplainingly, but there’s a hollowness to their gazes that unsettles me.

Bren rattles the iron gate again, calling out, and a man pokes his head out of the kiln building. He waves and hurries over to greet us. He is short and lean as a whip, his mustache thick and his hair threaded with gray.

“You’ve come back, kel! Welcome, welcome! And this is your lovely wife?”

“She wanted to see the bricks,” Bren drawls. “Says she only wants the best for her house. Figured I’d humor her. You know women.”

I feel my cheeks warm yet again. I keep my gaze focused on the man’s chest.

He laughs genially. “No need to worry about old Téran’s bricks! I fire them at the perfect temperature; that’s the key.” He turns to me, his eyes lingering on my bruised cheek. “My bricks will last a hundred years, easy.”

I dip my head. “I’m glad to hear it, kel.”

“What did I tell you about speaking out of turn?” Bren asks, leaning toward me, his voice silky smooth.

I keep my face downturned, my teeth gritted. These may be the roles he’s chosen for us to play, but I don’t like them one bit.

“Remember that,” he says softly, and turns back to the brickmaker.

I keep my head ducked after that, following Bren and Téran through the yard to the open-air hall leading to the kiln, where they discuss the making of bricks. I pretend attentiveness but really, I am watching the boys. They are all of them still damp from the morning’s rain, their hair flat against their skulls and hanging in rattails, their clothing clinging in wet folds. As they pass us in a never-ending round, I catch sight of scars on their legs, an oozing cut on one of their hands. Never once do I manage to catch their eyes.

I watch as a boy passes us to fetch a load of still hot bricks that have recently come out of the kiln. The kiln itself is housed in a single room reached by the hall we stand in. Above the kiln room’s doorway hangs a bit of wood with a shape carved into it, or perhaps burned, though I can’t tell what it’s meant to be, overlapping curves and then lines crossing over them.

Across the hall from the kiln is a small room. I glance within as another boy passes us to take his stack of bricks outside. The room is small and dark, with a bit of rubbish in the corner. No, not rubbish—blankets.

I shift, peering inside. Toward the top of the walls a series of bricks have been left out beneath the overhang of the roof, allowing for ventilation. Their absence allows just enough light for me to see that, beyond the small pile of worn blankets, the room contains only a single bucket. It doesn’t take much imagination to guess what that’s used for. This isn’t an empty storeroom; it’s where the boys sleep.

I ease back, assessing the door. It’s solid wood, with a bar to close it—on the outside. I stare at it as if I could will the bar to the other side of the door, make it a protection for these children rather than a tool of imprisonment. But there’s no arguing with it.

I turn back to the kiln room, the conversation between the men barely registering. My eyes wander over the kiln, the bricks cooling in racks. The room is sweltering hot, the air above the bricks wavering. No wonder the boys’ hands are so rough. They must have been burned daily by the bricks until their hands built up enough scar tissue to protect them.

“You’ve some good helpers here,” Bren observes, starting back out toward the gate.

“They do their job,” Téran says as I trail after them.

“Do they live around here?”

Téran grins, but it’s an unpleasant look on him. “You could say that. I give them food and board, and they work for me. No one else wants them, I can tell you that.”

“Good of you to take care of them, then,” Bren says, a slight edge to his voice. I glance at him. It’s the first indication I’ve caught that the boys’ labor bothers him. But his expression is only mildly curious as he says, “And what do they do with their time off? They have family around here to visit?”

“Nah, they’re all of them orphans. We’re our own family, see? There’s nowhere else for them to go.”

“They must be grateful to you indeed.”

“They ought to be,” Téran says. “Sometimes they need a little help with that. But you know how that is.”

Bren reaches up and places a hand at the back of my neck. “Certainly do,” he says, and I finally understand the reason for his act. This is how he has won the brickmaker’s trust enough to have such an open conversation: parading my meekness and bruises to show that he too favors violence to maintain his power and authority. He must have taken his measure of the man when he visited yesterday evening.

“We’ll be back,” Bren says now, dropping his hand from my neck to my waist. “Unless, dear wife, you are not pleased?”

“No, no,” I say quickly, as if afraid to countermand him. “It is as you wish.”

Téran smiles broadly. “Let me know how many cartloads you’ll need, and I’ll have the order ready within a week.”

Bren agrees, and a few minutes later the iron gate closes behind us.

I glance back as we walk up the street. “Why don’t they run? The boundary wall isn’t that high.”

“Look around,” Bren says, his voice hard and flat. “Do you see all these people? If they spot