Chapter One: Rain Falls

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking out over the city they were building on the tops of the Wede Mountains, General Gailert Winstrong drew in a breath letting his eyes fall on the ruined Kitai tower that stood out on a high peak. The city of Roan they were building on a lower peak would someday outshine it. But until then, Gailert contented himself with his dream and ambition of laying stone by stone with water systems and electricity—one city at a time.

“General Winstrong.” A corporal entered the room, standing in the doorway. “The car you ordered is ready.”

Gailert turned, regarding the young blue-eyed Sky Child that was as ambitious as he was when he had been young though he himself had been born without the gift. He admired ambition. It was an assurance that the nation would thrive long after he was gone. “I’ll get my travel coat. Fetch my bag.”

Clicking his heels together, the corporal bowed. “Yes, Sir.”

The corporal leading, Gailert exited his office, lifting his umbrella off of the hook. It was likely to rain. Unfortunately, that would halt construction for the day. The stones did not set well in rain, and humans were difficult to motivate when they were shivering in the wet.

Walking down the steps under the cover of the overhang, Gailert peered over the open square at the head of the city. The sky was gray and looming darker. Beyond it, the clouds were gloomy, and he could see some of the moisture pulling down to the ground with distant lightening. He was glad they put in lightening rods to prevent electrocution on their mountaintop, something the ignorant peasants did not understand. Those humans looked up at him, even from the rocks they were placing, fitting them so that they would last for centuries to come under the direction of their overseers with just as dark eyes—though their peasant brown was nothing to his own island earth color. The humans’ rusty brown eyes were as savage as their glares. They knew him. They hated him.

“Step to it,” Gailert said, gesturing to the newly constructed automobile parked on the curb. Its improved engine, just like their ancestors used to make, would take him and his men quicker on the roads than the peasant carts and horses they had to rely at the start of the war. He also liked how it gave him more freedom than relying just on the railroad.

He felt his side holster for his pistol, just in case. Lately the peasants had begun to understand that the pistol at his hip was not a magic stick but a weapon much more accurate and deadly than their crossbows, and they could be counted to attempt to steal one. They really were unscrupulous.

The corporal immediately opened the back door for the general, holding it at attention as Gailert climbed inside. Sighing to himself, Gailert felt only regret as he sat down, reaching for his seat belts. Because he did not have the gift like all the other blue-eyed Sky Children, he also did not have the memory of ancient luxuries as they did. This would be his fourth time inside this vehicle, and it took a great deal of strength not to reveal how the engine’s rumbling and bounce of the wheels startled him. The blue-eyes were always watching to see if he would reveal his weakness as an ungifted Sky Child. They seemed to be waiting for it at every turn. That was why he always had to keep a strong face. Never would he allow them to know they had the advantage. He would never let them think he was weak.

It had been once said that his birth was a bad omen. They said it was a sign that age of progress was near the end. He was first of his generation to be born with brown eyes after all his progenitors before him had demon blue. And after him others with brown eyes were born. And like him, they were born without the gift.

Every Sky Child with blue eyes had the gift. The gift of touch, the gift of absorption, the gift of disguise, and the gift of quick learning. When his parents were unable to pass on to him the knowledge of their ancestors by touch, they knew they had to do something to protect their child, or he would die like a human in the world they ruled. But Gailert Winstrong was not one to be coddled. Tough at an early age, he knew he was at a disadvantage to his blue-eyed brothers so he stepped up to the challenge and made every other Sky Child step back and take notice that he was no weak human.

With a stiff neck, Gailert nodded to the corporal to close the door and go around to the driver’s side. The corporal obeyed, his blue eyes flickering as if he had a million questions he wanted to ask the general, but he dared not touch him to take the answers. The general always wore gloves anyway. To steal his thoughts one would have to outright touch his face, and that was considered insubordination. Gailert wanted to remain a mystery to them as much as they were a mystery to him.

As soon as the corporal had loaded the general’s bag and closed his door, Gailert ordered him to drive to the guardhouse at the city wall. There they would pick up the military support required for their journey. They had business in the north. 

*

In the north it was also raining. The children of Summi Village usually played in the waters of Bekir Lake in the hours they were not learning their future trades, but on that rainy day when the lightening struck the mountaintops and the water, Kemdin Smith and the other boys around their seventh year of life ran under the cover of their wooden walkways and looked up at the downpour.

“Do you think a magician conjured it?” Kemdin’s friend Loid Fisher asked, peering at the crows that also scattered into the trees for shelter.

Telerd Roper, the tallest of the four friends that looked nearly alike in that Bekir Lake reddishness to their skin and hair, shook his head glancing at the water rippling as the wind blew hard. “Nah. A conjured lightening storm has more lightening. And look at the wind.”

“It won’t let up,” Kemdin murmured with a nod. He was the wiriest of the bunch. “That means we can’t play.”

“My dad will have my hat if I don’t return home,” Loid said, nodding in agreement with him. “He’ll think I drowned.”

Telerd exhaled aloud. “Well, at least the roads will be cleared. No one will want to travel in this rain.”

“You d-don’t think the b-blue-eyes w-would use magic to d-dry the roads, do you?” their younger, softer mannered playmate Soin Fisherson asked.

Kemdin bit his lip, closed his eyes then shook his head. “I hope not. Dad’s counting on the rain to keep them away. He’s got a tall order. And I gotta get back to help out.”

“You don’t know enough yet to help him with smithing, Kemdin,” Telerd said, looking at him sideways.

Shrugging, Kemdin said, “I do a lot of the cooling. I also get to pour in the molds.”

Loid looked up at the sky dreamily, a small smile crossing his face. “Arrowheads. Sky’s above, I’d love to meet those warriors and hold one of those swords your dad makes.”

Pulling his jacket over his head to keep off the rain, Kemdin called back to Loid as he started to head home. “Dad won’t even let me know where he hides them, and it is always night when they come around.”

“But they take the lake, don’t they?” Loid hopped after him followed closely by Telerd and Soin.

Kemdin nodded. “The roads are too dangerous. The blue-eyes got these iron carriages that move without horses. And they go faster than horses, rolling on an iron road, making noise like dragons. They’re like these big black rolling kilns, blowing smoke behind them.”

“Y-you saw one?” Soin’s eyes grew wide.

Nodding more vigorously, Kemdin rushed over to the next covered walkway keeping his wet hands away from the paper windows. He glanced at the demon wards and the dangling charms that warded off Goles and other demons that would torment them. Several of them had been mended. The last time the blue-eyed demons had been around they used their magic iron sticks and destroyed the demon wards. They didn’t seem to be afraid of anything.

“I saw one when my dad and I were delivering steel fish hooks to a village on Holm Lake. They had slaves hammering down the iron road so that no one could move it.” Kemdin shuddered. “Dad hid me from them because they’ve been taking boys and making them go with them.”

“Th-they’re t-t-taking slaves still?” Soin pulled his arms to himself.

Kemdin nodded. “Dad says they like them younger too. He say’s they beat the will out of you. And if you still fight, they just set their hands on you and suck the life out of you.”

“You’re lying. I don’t know a demon that can do that.” Telerd scrunched up his face showing he didn’t want to believe it, but he really did.

“I-I’ve seen it,” Soin said.

The three boys stopped and turned, staring at him.

“You saw it?” Kemdin drew in a breath.

“When? Where did you see it?” Loid asked, his heart pounding hard.

Soin glanced at Telerd who swallowed hard as he listened. “I-I w-w-was with m-m-my f-f-father, b-b-bringing in a haul. W-w-we were in the w-water. Y-you know, safe. B-but it w-was after that blue-eye b-busted up the d-d-demon wards on the town hall r-r-roof. I s-s-saw Ton Farmer g-go at one with a hoe…”

Loid drew in a sharp breath.

Nodding to him, Soin said, “…a-a-and the d-d-demon took a hit at the head. B-but there was another one w-with him and he g-grabbed Ton’s face. I-I watched him s-suck every b-bit of life out of him, and w-when the d-d-demon turned, he had Ton’s face and b-brown eyes. B-but because my dad and I saw it, he sh-shook it off as if Ton’s f-face was nothing b-but dirt, and the d-demon laughed.”

Kemdin felt sick. Telerd and Loid both looked it too.

“I heard…I heard stories about demons stealing lives,” Loid said. “I heard about a blue-eye that…that…that took a village chief’s life and pretended to be him, until one day his eyes turned blue and everyone knew he was demon. But by then the blue-eye knew everything about the village and they killed all the strong men and took the rest as slaves.”

“I keep thinking that they’d do that to us,” Kemdin said, and he hurried further towards his home.

Kemdin’s home was near the shore, but unlike the other village homes it was part stone. A smith’s shop had to be mostly stone and dirt rather than comfortable wood on flood stilts. The boys had to take the cross bridges to get to the smithy where smoke was already billowing up. Soin waved to Kemdin, rushing off to his fishing house where his father would be waiting for him. Loid parted just a few yards after to his home. Telerd ran with Kemdin to their porch hopping into the muddy sopped road where he would have to cross in the rain and get scolded for tracking mud on the planks when he got to the other side. Kemdin hastened to the walkway then jogged down the steps towards the smithy where he knew his father was waiting for him.

Trying to lift the latch and open the door as quietly as possible, Kemdin listened to the wood creak as the iron hinges of the door turned.

“Son? Is that you?”

Hanging his arms, knowing he was unable to sneak in now, Kemdin answered, “Yes, Dad. I’m here.”

“Hurry it up! You should have been her an hour ago. Those clouds should have been sign enough to come home.” His father the blacksmith was already banging away on a sword near the hearth. The coals looked hot and the steel glowed. 

“Sorry, Dad. I’m here now.” Kemdin took off his wet hat and hung it on the peg next to his leather apron. “Do you want me to pour the arrowheads today?”

His father nodded. “Yes. And don’t forget the gloves. The iron’s really hot today.”

Pulling on his apron, Kemdin grabbed the hide gloves, slipping the enormous hand covers over his child hands. It was awkward, but his father always said it was best he got used to the gloves until he could handle being near the furnace. Usually Kemdin sweated up his own deluge as they worked the iron and steal. The only hammering he was allowed to do was for practice. He was still watching the master’s work at sword making. It would be years yet before he would be allowed to learn that art.

“I already set the molds over there,” his father said. “Don’t rush. Be careful not to spill any. I don’t want you burning yourself while trying to impress me. Ok?”

Kemdin nodded. He had a burn on one of his feet from just that. He had dripped molten metal on his foot that last year trying to help with the cast iron. The deep scar reminded him always to take it easy. His father didn’t need to remind him. The man just said it as his own way of saying he loved him. It was only way his father could as he was a man of few words.

Carrying the hot metal over to where the molds rested, Kemdin picked up the iron hook and attached it to the notch on the bottom of the crucible, pulling it up to tip the contents from the spout side. With the tang of metal in the air, he watched it steam as the molten metal filled each hole cooling into pointed shapes they would have to trim. Making the molds took time also, but Kemdin enjoyed it when the metal was cool and they got to bust the arrowheads out and sharpen each one. He liked seeing the sharp points they made, often making them razor thin so that they cut well. This was a job Kemdin could do alone without his father. But they had to make many, and on dry days they had be careful in case the Sky Children came.

One after the other, he filled the molds until there was no more metal to pour. But by then his father had more ready for him, so Kemdin took the next crucible of molten metal. The shutters rattled as the wind and rain hit the walls. The roof shook, though the doves in the rafters cooed as if to calm the blacksmith and his son with reassurances that nothing could tear off that roof—even a demon dragon. But then dragons never came that far south, just as wary of men as the men were of them.  Kemdin poured more molten iron, counting the empty molds left. They had only two more trays to go. The first ones were probably ready to be broken out and cooled.

The bang, bang, bang of his father hammering and turning the sword echoed like a familiar song. Kemdin knew the tune. They said nothing to one another as they worked, though Kemdin grew tired from heaving the hot metal and wanted to set it down to rest for just a little while. But the rains would not last forever. Even if their village flooded and they could only walk on the board planks from house to house, the blue-eyes would eventually come back.

“Son.” His father dunked the sword into the water barrel, gesturing with his other hand. “I think the rain is letting up. Are the molds filled?”

Kemdin set down the crucible on the stone hearth. “Yes, Dad. All filled.”

Nodding, the smith hung up the sword. “Alright then. Start with the first ones. Break them out and cool them quick. I’ll help you sharpen them as soon as I pour off the rest of this metal.”

“What are you going to use it for?” Kemdin let his father take the crucible. He watched him carry them to another mold.

Grinning, his father said, “An herbalist needs a few cast iron cups for working in. I think this here is just enough iron for two.”

Smirking, Kemdin chuckled. “A witch? Ma’s right. You do favor them over magicians.”

His father laughed slightly, shaking his head. “No, son. Not favor them. I trust them more. Magicians sneer at you when you ask for things. Herbalists don’t.” He then turned with a smile, lifting an eyebrow to his son. “They don’t think themselves above the company.

“Besides, your ma is a little talented in herbal arts too,” he said. “A good woman is. When you get old enough, you should find one like your ma. Herbal art is great cooking.”

Kemdin laughed. His father liked to brag about their mother, but he was right. Their mother was a great cook that knew her herbs better than some witches. She always knew a cure for upset stomach and burns. Some people in the village even thought she was a witch, but then she always said that any good woman knows herbal magic[1].

The wind blew open a shutter. Kemdin dropped one mold and ran to close it as the rain dumped in. He heard another shutter bang open as he was sliding the latch to hold the one still, or so he thought at first until he heard shouts and turned around. It was the door. And it wasn’t the wind.

His father backed up as three blue-eyes followed by a brown-eyed one marched into the room. All of them wore their strange plain colored suits of pressed linen, each one a drab green of Sky Children military. Their collars were buttoned high to their necks, and none of them looked speckled with rain though it still poured outside in the street. One of the three blue-eyes lifted his magic iron stick and pointed it at Kemdin’s father.

“You’ve been helping them, Smithy,” the blue-eye said.

Kemdin took a step forward, looking about the room. He saw one of his father’s fire pokers getting hot near the coals. Even demons feared fire. And they weren’t Goles, so they weren’t faster than humans. He could get to it.

“Stay back, Son!” His father called to him. He then looked at the brown-eyed Sky Child. “What do you want?”

Despite his brown-eyes Sky Child in charge had cold look on his face. Without blue eyes his dark island skin somehow seemed darker. An islander. People always said blue-eyes were from the islands, demons from across the sea. He didn’t have the face of a man of Maldos. Those dark men were like the walking night with only white teeth and whites of eyes around blackness in their irises. This one was in between a Maldos man and man of the Eastern Provenance. With his brown eyes, he almost looked human.

“You dare address me as if we are equals?” the brown-eyed Sky Child said. His voice had a haughty grate to it that made Kemdin twitch. “You are supplying weapons to those raiders that continue to attack the progress of the railroad.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about!” the blacksmith shouted back. “I’m just a local blacksmith. I make cookware. Pans. Shod for horses.”

Kemdin could hear the Sky Child laugh in the back of his throat. It was unfriendly, as were his dark earthy eyes that scanned the room.

“You lie, human. That over there looks like a sword.” The brown-eyed sky child walked across the room to the new one his father had just been crafting. The demon lifted it off the hook, tilting it and nodding as he glanced back at the blacksmith. “And a fine one too. Were you planning to etch it?”

Both father and son froze.

One of the blue-eyes walked to the trays of arrowheads Kemdin had not yet broken out. He picked it up and twisted the mold, shaking out both sand and the cooling metal projectiles onto the floor.

Looking up, he nodded to the brown-eyed Sky Child. “It is as you suspected, General.”

Tucking the sword into his belt, the brown-eyed Sky Child glanced around the room as Kemdin had, perhaps looking for other weapons to unearth. His eyes fell on the boy. The corner of his mouth turned up. The demon nodded to the blue-eye who had turned out the arrowheads.

Immediately the blue-eye grabbed Kemdin and shoved him to the floor.

Kemdin howled, kicking and screaming to get away. His eyes focused on that demon’s bare hands. He was sure the blue-eye would suck him dry like Ton Farmer. He would be demon food.

But his father howled more. “No! No! Not my son! Please! Anything! I’ll do anything!”

The brown-eyed Sky Child strolled to the hearth as if he had all day to torture them. He picked up the hot iron poker then carried it in his gloved fingers as if he had come prepared to deal with hot metal. Lifting it, he sauntered over to where the blue-eye restrained Kemdin as the seven-year-old boy sweated large drops, the boy’s eyes on the poker as well as up the demon’s arm at the blue-eye’s bare hands.

Lowering the hot tip towards Kemdin’s chest, the brown-eyed Sky Child said, “Tell us where they are hiding out, or I will burn this boy’s chest right through with your own iron.”

Sweat covered the Smithy’s face as he looked with horror from poker to his son’s chest. “Please! Don’t! I don’t know where they are hiding!”

The Sky Child rested the tip against Kemdin’s front. The heat hovering over it alone burned a hole in his shirt and seared into his skin. Kemdin howled, pulling away into the ground as if it could swallow him up to put out the pain.

“No! Son! No! I really don’t know!” His father’s screams echoed against the walls as the rain continued to beat down. “I swear! They buy from us from across the lake!”

The brown-eyed Sky Child lifted the iron so that it was only an inch from Kemdin’s chest. “Across the lake? And where do you hide the weapons you sell them?”

“They bought them already.” The smith panted hard, his stare fixed on his son whose eyes had rolled back in his head, though Kembin was still breathing.

The Sky Child pressed the poker against Kemdin again. The boy’s screams filled the smithy.

“No! It’s the truth! I was making new ones now! I don’t have any others!” His father screamed.

“When are they coming again?” the Sky Child asked, his confident voice deepening with menace.

Shuddering, the smithy shook his head. “The new moon. They pick the day.”

Removing his poker from the boy’s skin, the brown-eyed Sky Child walked over to the smith, his father. “You had better not be lying to me.”

He then nodded to one of the blue-eyes who immediately touched the smithy’s face. A flicker of sparks crossed the demon’s glowing eyes, and he nodded back to the brown-eyed Sky Child.

“It’s the truth. He hides his weapons in a deep hole under the hearth. He has to put out the fire to get to them. But it’s empty. These are all new.” The blue-eye stood up. “Do we stay to the new moon?”

The brown-eye shook his head.

“No. No need. They won’t be acquiring weapons this time around.” He turned to the smithy and bent over to look him in the eye. “You, human, are going to pass on a message for me. Those who defy the Sky Lord will regret ever being born.”

The demon turned, looking at Kemdin with a smirk, then started back, lifting the poker.

“No! Please! Not my son!” The smithy sobbed, writhing in the grasps of the blue-eyes that held him, trying his hardest to break away. “Don’t! Not my son! Please!”

Kemdin watched as the brown-eyed Sky Child approached him with the iron. It was death for him now. When he had been born the village had celebrated. His father had been without child for so long, and now he would die. They had said his birth was a good omen—but demons had a way of making good things bad. His father was one of the last great sword makers of their people, and now he would have no heir.

“Not your son?” The brown-eyed Sky Child’s voice echoed over him with amusement as Kemdin had waited for his death. “Very well.”

Suddenly, in one turn, the demon stepped to the smithy and rammed the hot iron rod through the smithy’s chest.

Kemdin’s father’s eyes opened at the ceiling in horror. But then he turned to look at his boy. Kemdin screamed out, struggling to get to his father, breaking out of the blue-eye’s grip that had loosened. But when the smithy fell, the blue-eyes dusting off the soot from their pristine uniforms and turning towards the door as one opened an umbrella for the brown-eyed demon, the smithy smiled at his son who was still alive.

Kemdin crawled to his father, clutching his father’s shirt in his hands and watering the dying man’s shoulder with his tears. The pounding of the rain, the blowing of the wind, the sobbing of his son who loved him—and the smithy closed his eyes.

 

A wail echoed over the village as the Sky Children entered their rail-less iron carriage. The brown-eyed one scanned the scene watching the dark looks of the locals fix on him. One blue-eye turned to him and said, “General Winstrong, should we break down their demon wards again?”

“What for?” brown-eyed demon replied. “They’re demon specific. They have no affect on us.”

“They are a sign of defiance,” the blue-eye said.

Giving a snort, the brown-eye climbed inside the vehicle. “These savages? The last of their strong men died today, and his heir is now quivering in the soot. Those wards are a sign that they are terrified of us. But if you feel it is necessary to destroy them, go ahead. But doing so makes you look weak.”

Lifting his chin, the blue-eye stiffened and walked to the driver’s side of the car. The other two blue-eyes turned, watching the locals of Summi emerge from their homes practically called out by the wail of smithy’s child. The demons lifted their weapons, letting their leering smiles spread across their faces. One turned with a snort as they climbed into another of the horseless vehicles.

“Then shall we return to Roan?” the driver of that vehicle asked as soon as he closed his door.

With a mild snort, the brown eye was heard to reply, “No. We will be heading to Calcumum next to check up on Governor Shillig’s progress.”

“Yes, Sir.” His driver turned the ignition. “Then we will be resting back at the inn?”

“Of course,” the brown-eye said.

Their car rolled through the murky road back out the way they had come. One by one they left the fishing village behind as the smithy’s wife ran from her home to her husband’s shop.

She flung open the door.

The hot iron was lying on the ground beside her husband and her son lay panting next to him. Both of his palms were burned. He stared up at the ceiling. The boy’s hair was now checkered with white patches among the brown, from shock.

“Kemdin!” She ran over to him.

Kemdin lowered his head, tears in streaks down the sides of his face. “Mom…Dad is….”

She grabbed hold of him, pulling him close. “Kemdin! My son!”

Kemdin trembled as she held him, but his eyes were on the rain outside.

 

[1] See the Jonis Scrolls for details about the nature of Herbal Magic or Witches

Chapter Two: Water Ripples

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Progress is awarded to the persistent’ was an old saying of the Sky Children. ‘A blue-eye rarely lets a thing alone’ was a saying among the humans of Westhaven. Both were true.

In the year since he cut off weapon supplies and squashed the rebellion in the plains of northeast Westhaven, General Gailert Winstrong had advanced his cause for progress with about as much persistence as ever. He had hoped he would be sent to help out against the Kitai warriors along the Westerlund Pickets, but the governors and ruling Sky Lord declared he was of better use in the East. After all, he had successfully overseen the build up of Roan, Gibbis and Marchal Cities and had regulated the local humans into an order that brought peace.

Of course, his work was never done. Gailert traveled a great deal in his job. Meeting with governors and post commanders and dealing with captured rebels took a lot out of him and he was starting to feel his age. He traveled mostly in the east among the lands between Calcamum and Sundri along the coast to Herra and Kolden in the north. It was farmland, and he loved the color of growing wheat and barley. He stopped at every village he visited to rest, but even that did not ease his aches. And as he traveled south from the inn on the shores of Bo Lake to survey the progress of their new fishing boats, he could feel how tired he was. His shoulders ached.

“Do you want a rest, General?” his new driver asked him. He had hired a young Sky Child with less ambition this time around. The previous one had dreams of leading his own troops, and Gailert had no intention of standing in the way of an ambitious fool. In his age, he had only gotten wiser.

Sighing, Gailert replied, “Not until we get to Rivermouth Village. I intend to visit with Lieutenant Deveden this afternoon. He and I have some business to discuss.”

“Yes, Sir.”

And they drove on along the dry road. Though transportation had improved, the vehicles more free and speedy, they still had a long way to go with modernizing the roads. They were still cart roads, rutted and dirty. Already Gailert had submitted a suggestion to the governor of the Calcumum district that they start thinking about paving the main roads to and from the large cities. So far the governor was content with the railroad.

“Sir,” his driver said, “we’re coming on to the river road.”

Gailert nodded. “Good, man. Drive on. We’ll stay in Rivermouth for the night.”

*

The other side of the Rode River locals fished, lifting their heads as the metal marvel rumbled over the dirt highway. They had seen it and others like it intermittently for the past few months. And as it rolled by, they kept their eyes on it until it was gone around the bend of the river. Then they lifted their heads up and nodded to the ones hiding in the bushes to climb into the boats.

“Did you see that? General Gole going south.” A man with bristly stubble on his chin gestured with a bandaged hand. “Do you think he’s visiting that blue-eye lieutenant or is he going more south to the old man?”

A man with more reddish hair peered after the automobile, clenching his teeth. “Better count on him going to the old man, even if he isn’t.”

“Then to the lake?” the first man said.

The others with him nodded.

“We have to get our arsenal first before that demon shuts them down for good,” he said.

Pushing off the shore, the men took in their nets while the rest on shore nodded and climbed back into the scrub.

*

“Ah! General! So nice that you could come!” Lieutenant Deveden reached out with open arms as if to give a genial peck on the cheek.

But Gailert was in no mood to play the skin brushing game. He held out his hand for a shake watching the dismay, though ever so slight, of the lieutenant’s opportunity to read his superior’s thoughts pass by. “Yes, I’m only here for the night. Then I go south. I intend to stop by the villages in the hills, but I see you haven’t built the road bridge yet over the river.”

With a hearty smile, the lieutenant shrugged. “I am dismayed to inform you that Governor Shillig insists that I focus my resources more in, uh, working on the rail bridge from Calcumum City to Herra. That has taken quite more work than even I have estimated.”

“And you can’t convince your architect to add a road path alongside the rail on the bridge?” Gailert asked.

Giving another shrug, the lieutenant sighed. “I’m afraid not. And believe me, I suggested it even to the governor, but the man seems to think that automobiles are a passing fad. Or at least that is what he says.”

“I knew it,” Gailert said, taking a seat in the lieutenant’s office. “He doesn’t want automobiles to replace the rail. Even though he remembers the convenience of them, he’d rather have people continue to pack into stations, wait in long lines and pay for tickets. I bet that means more money in his pockets.”

Lieutenant Deveden snickered. “Yes. You hit it on the head. But we mustn’t be too verbally critical. I hear the Sky Lord has been allowing governors to list dissidents, especially among the…new generation.”

“You mean the brown-eyeds, don’t you?” Gailert’s expression hardened.

Lieutenant Deveden was a blue-eye, and in his eyes there was a flicker of amusement in making the general uncomfortable. He shrugged. “What do I know? But there has been talk that some of those born without the gift are more likely to undermine the vision because they don’t have it.”

Gailert rose from his seat. “Are you saying that because I do not steal thoughts with a touch I cannot understand the possibilities of the future?”

The lieutenant blenched, remembering his place suddenly.

“I have brought the eastern plains into regularity,” Gailert said. “I have made more improvements in the quality of life in this part of Westhaven than in any other district. It is not the governor that has made Calcumum the city that it is, but me and my vision of the possibilities.”

“I do not doubt that, General, it is just that—”

But Gailert cut him off. “Do you think that just because you are blue-eyed that you are more able to envision the perfect world?”

“I don’t envision,” Lieutenant Devenden said, stepping from him. “I remember. And what I remember is that with this technology also comes new troubles.”

The general frowned.

“And I understand how you feel,” the lieutenant said. “You do have a vision. A great vision. But what the governor remembers and reminds us of is that if the barbaric elements get a hold of our technology and start to understand it, they will wreak war more cataclysmic than our methods ascribe.”

“I’m not talking about sharing our weapons or even handing them the tools of power into the hands of these humans,” Gailert said, sighing with a turn towards the window to look over at the lake. Several fishing boats rolled out from the river and were now rowing into Lake Bekir, perhaps for a good spot to fish. “I’m talking about removing the savageness from them by easing and regulating the roads.”

“You can’t take savageness out of the humans,” said Lieutenant Deveden. “They are naturally born like that. They don’t have a memory of civilization. They don’t understand it.”

“Then we teach them,” Gailert said.

The lieutenant snorted, walking towards the window to see what Gailert was looking at. “Teach them? Their minds are wrapped up in magic and darkness. You know, they had created some of those demons out there. These days I’m starting to agree with Governor Shillig. I think they prefer their ignorance.”

Gailert turned and nodded. “That, they do. But I am of the thought that we simply remove the cancer that spreads the darkness among them. Destroy any witch, magician, demon, or wizard we find—”

“That is already policy,” Lieutenant Deveden said, nodding.

“But we must also teach that such things are the way of death for them,” Gailert said and looked out the window again towards the lake. “That we are the bringers of light. Once they look to us, rely on us, they won’t want magic anymore.”

With a sigh, Lieutenant Deveden tapped his glass window. “There are times I think that view is so romantic, General. The unfortunate thing about having the gift is also remembering that this world is magic. You cannot entirely stamp out a thing when the environment around you is the very thing you want to get rid of.”

Gailert tilted his head. “I don’t entirely believe that this world is magic.”

“Trust me and the ancient memory,” the lieutenant said. “Our ancestor, the first Sky Lord, had been forbidden to come here for that very reason. This world is an unexplainable phenomenon. It should not exist.”

Lifting his eyebrows, Gailert said, “Are you telling me that the common belief that this world makes wizards from the very rocks is something you buy into?”

Laughing, the lieutenant shook his head. “No, sir. But I am telling you what I know to be so. Magic has a way of seeping back out even after its workers are eradicated. This world is said to be alive, and we—the Sky Children—are regarded as parasitic invaders.”

Gailert grunted then turned from the window. “With that philosophy, you are justifying the savages of this world the right to attack us.”

“Not right. I’d rather look at it that we are in fact the cure and they are the cancerous cells that canker the world.” The lieutenant lifted up the window and immediately stuck his head out, calling to the soldiers outside, gesturing towards the lake. “Hey! You go and see if those humans have a permit for fishing there. Take the steam boat to catch up with them.”

“What’s that?” Gailert walked to the window again. “Not local fishermen?”

The lieutenant shook his head. “They’re rowing too far out and too fast. That is suspicious.”

“Yes.” Gailert narrowed his eyes at the lake. It started to reflect the colors of the sky from the setting sun. “Suspicious.”

*

“I-I s-s-saw it! I-I’m t-telling you! I-it w-was one of those r-rail-less carriages. Like the o-one that b-brown-eye travels in,” Soin said, tugging on Loid’s arm. “D-dad and I were f-fishing at the river mouth and w-we saw him yesterday.”

“General Gole,” Loid murmured. “The brown-eye.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t just a Maldos—?” Telerd started to say but Loid lifted his hand to silence him. Loid saw Kemdin walking across the way on boardwalk.

Right away, Loid hurried to match Kemdin’s pace, following him until their eyes could meet. But Kemdin kept his eyes to the wood deck the same as he had since the day his father was killed. Kemdin’s hair grew odd with white tufts sticking out among his regular brown hair now, from what had been common neat. Even one of his eyebrows was half snow white. It was as if part of his life had been sucked from him.  

Loid decided to dare it and hopped from the wooden deck into the dirt road. His friends followed him, the threesome climbing up the other side to where Kemdin was now sliding the paper door to the miller’s shop aside. The boys hopped in after him. They slid the door closed behind them.

“Is it true? Is he in the village?” Loid practically shouted it, but he hushed up immediately as others in the shop glared at them.

Kemdin turned his head and lifted his eyes. “He? Who?”

Telerd slapped a hand on Loid’s mouth.

“Nothing. No one.” Telerd then pulled Lois aside to the door and hissed in his ear. “He obviously doesn’t know. And I don’t think his mother would want him to know. The guy that killed his father! I don’t about you, but if it were me—”

Kemdin blinked, staring at them then sighed and walked to the counter to finish his errand. “I need pound of rye flour, please. I also need two pounds of oats.”

“You’re a good boy,” the shopkeeper said. “Helping your mother. You keep out of trouble. All right? There’re blue-eyes lurking outside.”

But Kemdin blinked hard, suddenly clutching the top of the counter. “Blue-eyes?”

The shopkeeper nodded.

Turning, Kemdin marched back to the door and slid it open. He peered over the village looking at the smoke coming from the smith shop. “Grandpa.”

His friends followed him out, watching Kemdin shake.

Immediately Kemdin bolted across the wood deck and jumped into the road. At first his three pals watched him but then ran after him, racing not so much to stop him but to see where he was going.

Kemdin climbed up the opposite deck, and started down it to get to the smithy shop, but already the echo of a new yet now familiar cry of the pistol split the air. Even as his feet pounded the deck to reach the doors of his home, his eyes skimmed across the rail-less carriage of their recently appointed village Sky Child magistrate, the Sergeant Jemmes Lugan, outside his home. Another of those metal vehicles was parked right behind it.

He sped up.

Two Sky Child demons walked out from the smith shop, dusting their clean uniforms laughing as if they had just shared in a mild yet humorous joke.

“No!” Kemdin cried out, passing his home and running for the smithy. He tried to shove past the sergeant on the wood path. but the demon latched his hand on Kemdin’s arm, jerking him upward.

“Here’s the one!” Sergeant Lugan said, grinning wider. “See! I told you, strong and healthy, a bit scarred. But he’s got no use here now.”

Kemdin tried to kick at the sergeant’s shins but as he lifted his eyes in savage protest they fixed on a face that he had never forgotten. He froze.

“Ah! I remember him!” the brown-eyed demon known as General Gole said, grabbing hold of Kemdin’s hair and tugging on one of the white tufts, then pinching the boy’s shoulder as if to measure the thickness of his meat. “Plucky child. Yes. He might do well.”

Jerking back, Kemdin did kick the sergeant’s shins, anything to get away from the demon that had destroyed his father. However his bare foot against the tough leather had no affect.

“It’s not like he’s going to be a smithy now,” the sergeant added with a smile as he then stroked Kemdin across the face with his bare fingers.

All his fight still in his chest, Kemdin would have struck out again, but every drip of strength he had sucked up through his neck to the fingertips of the demon.

Kemdin collapsed, unable to even stand. He heard his friends cry out for him, but he could hardly move. In the back of his mind death reached out to him calling him over to the other side where the souls traveled into the shadows. But his eyes were open, and he hung by his arm in the demon sergeant’s grip, staring up, panting hard as the demon general stood over him with a satisfied smile.

“Yes, he is perfect,” the sergeant said, his voice sounding as if from a hollow wind. “He’s terrified of you. I can get chains from the office. If you pay me for the work, General, I’ll even get you a key.”

General Gole chuckled, looking back at the three other boys who dared not move any closer to him since he was famous for his man-slaughtering. “I don’t need a key. He won’t require one.”

“Ah!” The sergeant turned with smile gesturing to his subordinates to carry Kemdin for him so he could arrange the details of their business transaction. “A traditionalist. I like your style.”

They walked down the wood deck to their vehicles with the other blue-eyes behind them carried what was left of the last heir to their village smithy. The fishermen held back, shaking their heads as they shuddered. The farmers lowered their heads, unable to stand up to the blue-eyes. And the wail of the smith’s wife carried on from her doorway as the other women held her back as she cried, “Kemdin! My son!”

“Oh no.” Loid retreated to the walls of the house, staring as the Sky Children marched away with his friend. “Kemdin’s dead.”

“No,” Telerd replied, wishing to vanish into the shadows. “But he’s gonna be that demon’s his slave.”

“W-we’ll never s-see him again,” Soin murmured, rubbing his nose as if he smelled something rotted. 

Kemdin hardly could lift his head when the blue-eyed demons laid him on the floor of the military office and attached the shackles on his ankles and wrists. There was hardly room to pull out of them. His ankle cuffs were heavy with no way to open them without a particular key, but the wrist chains were obviously temporary, very loose, meaning he would be used for labor. All Kemdin could do was stare up at the brown-eyed demon ankles and loathe him. The village already echoed with weeping for his grandfather who had obviously been executed for continuing to smith arrowheads and swords despite the death of his son. Kemdin had helped him that past year, making not only arrow heads, but learning how to make knives, daggers and hoping to soon to graduate to swords. It was more than unfortunate that the demon general had come on that day. It was obvious that their night shipment would be ambushed, and the rebels from up river would have to find someone else to make weapons for them.

Unable to close off the pain he felt, knowing that his mother would be left alone with no one to care for her, Kemdin sobbed.

The blue-eyes smacked his head a number of times, muttering for him to be quiet. General Gole rested casually in a chair with one leg crossed over his knee chatting with the sergeant with only mild glances at his new acquisition.

“How long do you think it will take to train him?” the general asked the sergeant in the same tone Kemdin’s father would have asked his neighbor about training a dog to sit.

The sergeant examined Kemdin from a distance with one eye closed. “I’m not sure. The thoughts he has are very childish, so he may lash out for a while. But he is skilled for labor. That old man had been teaching him how to make knives lately.”

General Gole jerked up his head and peered more inspecting down at Kemdin. “This boy? What else did his thoughts tell you? Was he really being trained that young?”

Nodding, the sergeant said, “They start them young here. If you want to re-educate these ones, you have to start when they are infants.”

“Hmm.” General Gole frowned, stroking his chin. “I see.”

“That one has been making arrowheads on his own for a while, and he knows where his grandfather hides them,” the sergeant said, his smile widening.

Kemdin tried to kick out, but he could hardly raise his leg. Even after they chained him he could not move to struggle.

“So tonight when they come to collect…?” The general was also grinning.

“Don’t worry,” the sergeant said. “We’ll be ending their attacks soon enough. All we need is one of them and their hideout will be known.”

“Good.” The general rose. He gestured for one of the blue-eyes to lift Kemdin off the floor. “I’ll be taking my boy then, and be off.”

Waving over to Kemdin, the sergeant said, “You’ll want to get him cleaned up if you are taking him back to Roan. His state may reflect on you. Governor Shillig has been hyper critical lately about the state of the slaves we keep.”

General Gole grunted. “Huh. Governor Shillig forgets that he only governs Calcumum and the plains around it. He can set policy there and keep out of the Wede Mountains.”

“Yes, yes,” the sergeant said. “But Governor Shillig has the Sky Lord’s ear these days. You may want to curry favor with him. You know what the governor thinks about brown-eyeds.”

To that the general snorted. Kemdin heard it as he watched the general’s lifted chin as a blue-eye hefted the child up and slung him over his shoulder like a potato sack, carrying him out of the room and into the front of the Sky Child governing office towards the automobile.

General Gole said, “I did not get to my position by pandering to politicians. I earned it though merited hard work, which the Sky Lord knows well of. It would foolish to forget that. And you, if you ever get the chance, remind Governor Shillig of that also.”

“Yes, sir.” But the sergeant had that smug tone that said he valued the color of the demon eye more than work.

Perhaps the general noticed it also, because he turned and said, “Remember, my skills are not easily acquired by the gift of touch. Many have tried. And they all failed. You may have knowledge, but I have wisdom and cunning, and those are attributes that you cannot steal.”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” Sergeant Lugan said.

Sky Children always spoke coldly. Kemdin never saw one that acted any more than that. They didn’t have hearts, some people said. And as the blue-eye lifted open up the back of the automobile and dumped Kemdin inside the trunk, slamming it shut and locking it, he had no doubts of that truth.

In the darkness, hearing the mournful murmur of the people of his village and then the shaking rumble of the automobile’s engine as the vehicle started up, Kemdin pulled his arms and legs close to his body and closed his eyes. It would be the last he would see of it, for no one escaped the blue-eyes and returned home.

 

It was hours later when Kemdin emerged from the darkness blinking and squinting as the light from the hot afternoon sun flooded into the trunk and the blue-eye yanked him out. The demon driver was muttering something under his breath in a language Kemdin did not know, dragging him over by the scruff of his shirt back. One of the words he did say that Kemdin did understand was ‘heavy’, perhaps implying the weight he had to drag around. General Gole was nowhere to be seen. The entire view in the blinding sunlight was the porch of a building styled differently than those in his village—more blockish and tall with straighter roofs lacking ornamentation. The most prominent difference was the carved railing that blocked most of the traffic from the road. Kemdin looked around and noticed that most of the buildings in this village cluster were like that—not native built but Sky Child in construction. He was now way beyond home.

“What’s this?” a voice from above asked.

“A new acquisition. Not trained, so you better not touch or he’ll bite your fingers off,” the blue-eye said.

Kemdin blinked up at the proprietor, swallowing as he saw the second brown-eyed Sky Child of his life. This one was not dressed as primly as all those soldiers that had come to his village. This one wore an open teal vest over a yellowed shirt with the button ties dangling rather than properly knotted. Both tops hung open so that his chest covered in black hair showed all the way down to a plump gut that hung over his belt. Sweat stains discolored the fabric underneath his arms and around his neck as heavy moisture dripped down his thick and flabby skin, even dribbling into his eyes from his brow. Wiping it, the demon snorted then spat on the ground. “You getting a room?”

The blue eye driver nodded. “Two rooms. And we need a cage for him.”

“I got a hog pen, but they’d eat him alive. You want me to chain him to the post?” the smelly proprietor asked. He hocked another lump of phlegm.

Kemdin made a face and turned to look away. His mother had always said to avoid such ill-mannered kinds of men.

The blue-eye snorted and started to laugh, walking inside and dragging Kemdin with him. “The kid’s got better taste than you do. Nah. I’ll take him up to the room for now.”

“We don’t house humans,” the proprietor replied with a glare, making his dark brown eyes look murderous.

But obviously the blue-eye knew he had nothing to fear from this brown-eyed Sky Child as he said, “You do now.”

The blue-eye dragged Kemdin up to the doors and right through to the stairs where several blue-eyes in even fancier yet odd clothes were talking. They all turned, watching the soldier drag the human child up the stairs, giving them all a nod as he passed by. One rose from his seat.

“Are you bringing that in here?”

The blue-eye soldier nodded. “I am. He’s General Winstrong’s new slave, and I don’t trust that brown-eye outside to not to lose him.”

The other blue-eyes nodded in approval, and the soldier turned again to drag Kemdin up the stairs. Kemdin heard one say before the walls muffled all words: “So, that General is really acting like a true Sky Child. Good. So many of those brown eyes are a disgrace to the name of the Sky Lord.”

There were a great number of steps, more than Kemdin was used to. He tripped on them as the blue-eye dragged him up. On the upper floor the blue-eye hauled Kemdin to a room then lifted off a sign from the front of the door. The door opened strangely. Instead of sliding to the side like in his village homes, the door pushed in like the shop door. And the room was entirely bizarre. Their beds were off the ground and super padded with puffy bed covers. Their pillows were huge. Lamps had no wicks or oil, and the windows, they were like those in the sergeant’s office—glass and entirely see through. Cloth hung in front of it from a rod at the top, pulled to the side like the way girls pulled up their skirts when they waded in the lake.

There was a table to the side of the door with a chair like in that sergeant’s office. The blue-eye driver dragged Kemdin over to it and looked around the room as if irritated, muttering, “Don’t take too much of the kid’s energy or you’ll kill him. How am I supposed to keep him from running? He’s not broken yet or anything. The kid looks like he had rabies.”

Kemdin shuddered, watching the blue-eye jerk out drawers from the desk searching for something to use. The demon slammed them shut then turned over toward the bed. A flicker went across his eyes. He suddenly grinned and nodded to himself.

“I got it.” He grabbed another hold of Kemdin and dragged him over to the bed, setting him next to the post of the bed leg. Pointing at him, the demon said, “Don’t move.”

Of course Kemdin didn’t dare move. The demon could suck him dry.

With a grunt, the blue-eye hefted up the corner leg of the bed then kicked the chains to Kemdin’s leg irons under it. Immediately the demon dropped it down so that the chains were looped around them, hooked on them so Kemdin could not move away.

“There you go,” the demon said to himself, wiping his hands off as if he had completed an enormously hard yet satisfying task. “I’m done with that. Now for a break.”

The blue–eye marched from the room closing the door behind him with much confidence that the child would not escape.

The moment he had gone, Kemdin groped over his ankle chain. He dug his fingernails into the cracks where they shut to see if he could pry them apart, but of course they would not budge. He tried pulling his feet through the gap in the shackles, pointing his toe, trying to make his feet smaller somehow, but his ankle and heel were too large. He even tried to lift up the corner leg of that bed, but he could hardly get it move. Panting, he dropped to the floor.

Kemdin stared up at the ceiling. It was only a matter of time before the demon that bought him would start beating him. He’d seen it with his father at the iron road the Sky Children were building. All slaves were beaten. He knew it was inevitable.

It was hours before he saw either the blue-eye or the general. Both of them entered the room looking more relaxed as if they had just eaten. The general had rubbed his belly, sighing as he walked into the room.

Waving to Kemdin, General Gole smiled to his driver. “Good job. You really do think outside the memory. I like that in a soldier. Ingenuity is what made our ancestors great, you know.”

“Thank you, sir.” The blue-eye looked honestly pleased, lifting his chest.

Kemdin cowered, suddenly watching the older Sky Child crouch down to look him straight in the eye. General Gole’s voice was deep and sonorous.

“Boy. You understand that I am your master now,” he said. “When you obey me, you will be fed and remain unharmed. If you disobey me, you will be punished. It is very simple.”

Kemdin withdrew towards the end of the bed.

“I’m getting on in years, and I’m tired of doing some things. So you will do them for me.” General Gole stood up, still looking down at him. “But really, I am sparing your life when I really ought to punish you for helping out our enemies. I have been trying to bring order to this world. Your kind has been perpetuating an age of darkness. I am here to bring light and progress.”

He turned and reached over to the lamp then twisted what looked like a peg. Almost immediately the glass ball inside the lamp glowed, but not like fire. It was steady and bright.

“See that? That is electricity,” the brown-eyed demon said.

“I don’t think he knows what electricity is,” the blue-eye cut in. “Look at him. His eyes are bulging out.”

And Kemdin was staring at the glass ball that glowed like a toy sun. He blinked at it and then stared at the two demons. General Gole was smiling though the blue-eye shook his head as if he thought the general was asking for too much.

The general twisted the peg again and the light went out. No smoke. No smell. It was just gone, though the globe was still there, glass like any old lamp though there were strange little metal pieces inside.

The demon twisted the peg again, and the light was glowing once more.

Kemdin drew in a breath, but still kept his distance. Somehow he knew they were playing games with him, perhaps luring him in for something nasty. Tricking him, teasing him before sucking the life out of him. It was like those demons to do that.

But General Gole switched the light on and off once more, then on again before leaving it on. He gestured for his driver to go, to which the blue-eye was happy to do shaking his head as he left. The general closed the door then sat down on the bed, sighing before looking at Kemdin again.

“I’m not feeding you today. You need to know what hunger feels like to understand your position in this world. You earn your bread,” the demon said. “Tomorrow I will give you just enough for the ride south. If you behave, I may give you more. If you kick out and cause my man or myself trouble, you will go without.”

Kemdin clenched his teeth, glaring up at him. But that only made the general smile.

He bent over and said to Kemdin, “There is an old saying: Never bite the hand that feeds you. This is your first lesson.”

The demon rose and walked to the door, exiting into the hallway. Kemdin dropped to the floor the moment he was gone, breaking into tears once more.

*

“So, how is your new pet?” one of the merchants down on the ground floor asked Gailert Winstrong when he stepped off the final step of the inn stairs and entered the dining hall.

Sighing with as much exhaustion as was considered dignified to have, Gailert replied while taking a seat, “He is still quite wild, but that is to be expected after only a day. But one look at the mind behind his eyes shows he can learn, and that is what matters.”

Another merchant chuckled, adjusting the chain to his watch while checking the time. It was close to dinner. They were all waiting to be served. “Do you really think you can manage a human boy without the gift?”

Gailert tilted his head and mildly regarded him.

 “I can manage anything,” Gailert replied, and took his seat at the table.

The other Sky Children laughed, nodding. They knew his reputation.

 The servants of the inn carried in the trays of steak and potato wedges with sides of thinly sliced beans and bacon in a spiced sauce alongside baked fruit dripping in candied syrup. They hauled over goblets of fresh juice and clean water, setting the cups, trays and plates on the tables next to each man and woman. The tradesmen and soldiers ate, chatting over trade and the progress of the country, though most of the merchants complained about the roads.

“…That’s what I say! Improve the roads and shipping will be ten times more efficient,” one of the merchants said, nodding to Gailert after he had recounted his feelings on the limitations of the railroad.

“But the rail lines are orderly and well regulated,” another of the merchants said, dabbing the corner of his mouth with his napkin. He was dressed quite finely, his velvet coat open to catch the cool breeze from the fan above that spun over the heads of the inn patrons. The lady at his side fanned herself with a lacy screen that had fluffy white feathers rimming the top edge. Her hair was pulled back and up off her neck and twisted into bun, held up with a brass pin that dangled crystals of blue and white.

“Only if your business is along the rails. What about the outlying areas?” That merchant gave his input. “There is an entire plain of farmland between Riken Lake and Tobi Town with rivers that need bridges and roads that need to be paved. The governor of Calcumum has the rail going through his land with stops along the line. He can be satisfied with no good roads.”

“The governor of Calcumum would rather keep the business in his fields and cut off the profits of us tradesmen above Kiratt Lake, and you know it,” a merchant wearing Indigo brocade silk cut in, dipping his flat bread into the thick sauce at his right.

The lady with him nodded, stroking along his shoulder with her svelte bare arm. She turned her slender neck and whispered as the lace to her gown fluttered in the warm breeze. “Undoubtedly.”

Gailert smiled in silence as these men debated the very issues he had confronted Governor Shillig about. He had known in the back of his mind that the governor of Calcumum was trying to gain more power and control than the Sky Lord had given him. It was possible even that Shillig was vying for the position of Sky Lord. Of course that was an impossible outcome. Everyone knew that the Sky Lord had an heir already, a handsome blue-eyed youth that was entering society within that year. Unless Governor Shillig was planning a coup, there was no way he would succeed in changing that. Gailert himself would make sure that such an outcome would never happen. 

“But what of the raiders I hear of that have attacked the rail lines? They were gone last year. How come they are back?” A tall lean linen merchant dressed in a prim suit of straw yellow with brass buttons turned to look at Gailert for the answer.

Taking it in stride, Gailert smiled and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his full stomach. “They are back only because those particular humans are like vermin. However, this evening the sergeant out in the Lake Bekir Peninsula will be collecting some of them. Getting their den will be easy from there.”

All the merchants exhaled in their chairs, relaxing their arms and backs. The ladies smiled, fanning and fluttering their eyes at their escorts. 

“How did you manage that?” one of them asked him, fluttering her eyes at Gailert as if to make her companion jealous.

With a grin that showed how pleased he really was with himself, Gailert said, “We uncovered a weapon smelting hovel they have been using. I had thought I had cleared it out last year, but like a cockroach nest it came back. Apparently I had not killed the main roach—until today.”

The merchants drew in a breath. The ladies straightened up, glancing towards the ceiling as if to see through.

One man leaned in, his lace cuff almost going into his cold vegetable salad. “Is that boy—?”

“Ah! You noticed.” Gailert grinned wider. “Yes, he is from the peninsula. I noticed him last time I was there too. This time I decided to pick him up. A strong child. He should be useful.”

“Wrangling for tadpoles, huh?” the merchant in silk brocade said, nodding. “Slaves should be trained young.”

“But what of the raiders?” the linen merchant asked the general.

Gailert nodded. “We believe some are coming tonight to collect their munitions. Arrowheads and swords. But what they are going to find is death.”

The merchants glanced to one another and nodded approvingly.

“Good.”

*

The night shadows covered everywhere as the moon was down. Only stars lit the lake, reflecting specks on the quiet water. The lake rippled with barely a sound as the men pulled their boats to shore, the rocks shifting slightly under their weight. Over a way in the crevices of the smith shop filled with thick silence waited with watchful eyes that almost seemed to glow blue, listening for their footfalls.

Treading with care not to disturb the blue-eye sergeant that usually slept with one eye open, these humans walked over the boards from the shore boats to the swinging door of the shop. Grasping the door handle, one man quietly tugged.

No one saw who jumped first. Was it the blue-eyed demons or the humans? But the crack of pistol fire split the air, waking the village. Cries of human voices called for retreat as their feet thundered back to the lake. Water splashed as pistol fire cracked again. But they could not stop for the dead. They pushed the boats back into the rippling dark, crying out to go with the water lapping over the bodies of those that floated face down as the booted feet of soldiers chased after the rest to take hold of one face or one arm of one living man to betray the rest of them.

Even as the others fled in their boats oaring their way across the lake, others swimming for the opposite shore, the demons seized their victim, ignoring the rest. They dragged him screaming to wooden homes.

The villagers scrambled out of their houses staring in horror as the demons hauled their catch to the center of the village.

“No!” The wail of women floated with the sobs of men and children.

And as the captive’s cries filled the rest of the air the Sky Children encircled him, grabbing their bit of skin as if they would pull him entirely apart. In front of the weeping crowd they saw the man try to slit his own throat. But his knife the blue-eyes took, and they tossed it away, pulling, drawing, sucking out everything within him. Before the people, their captive’s thick muscular shape shrank as a dry stalk, shriveling wrinkling, and pulling to his bones as he gasped, staring straight up at the stars above. His cry choked in his throat then he ceased to breathe. The demons dropped him. A husk. Dusty, flaking, dry, brittle husk.

All the blue-eyed demons stood erect, turned and faced the village. They spoke as if with one voice. “You cannot cross the Sky Lord. You are all seditious. Collaborators with the raiders.”

The sergeant walked down the planks and reached out, taking one of his soldier’s hands, after a few seconds he nodded. Then his eyes narrowed with a glare at the villagers.

“Set the village on fire,” the sergeant said, marching back towards his office. “Every man, woman and child aided them. We will clear out tonight.”

“Yes, sir!” his blue-eyed soldiers cried out. With a turn and click of their heels they marched straight into the smith shop and sought out the coals, which were still warm, each grabbing wood, straw, cloth, anything to make torches.

When one emerged, the smith’s mother screamed as she ran towards her neighbor the basket weaver. “Run!”

The villagers scattered. Children ran, screaming with their mothers who did not even take them into their homes, but ran straight to the lake. Fathers grabbed their hoes, their staffs, their pruning hooks, and their fishing spears—anything heavy to use to try and beat the demons off their families as they fled.

Dumping over oil lamps, the soldiers set them on fire. They also tossed in their torches among the clothes and blankets, watching them catch fire then going back for more.

The wood did not burn instantly. The damp resin in that timber had been prepared daily against fire. But as the demons dumped out the jars of liquor and grabbed the villagers’ linens, setting them ablaze, the wood began to burn and the village filled with thick black smoke that choked and blinded all that fled. As the fire blazed up higher, the Sky Children shot into the crowd, killing any man, woman and child they could see.

“Soin!” Loid cupped his hands shouting to be heard over the commotion. He was sure he had seen his friend somewhere in the street. The air constantly cracked with the noise of gunpowder. Screams answered it as if it were a language of some kind of morbid bird. “Soin!”

“I can’t see him!” Telerd hissed, crouching down under the walkway of his home and pulling Loid with him. “We have to get to the lake.”

“But I saw him! He could get killed!” Loid tried to stand to call for Soin again but he then just saw the boy, his small dark figure silhouetted by smoke and fire. Their friend walked out as if he had just woken from a sleep. Loid cupped his hands over his mouth and nose, shaking his head as he ducked and rushed across the street. “Soin!”

His friend’s head turned. He lifted his chin as if to smell the air, then he flicked up his hand. The smoke around him swirled all at once then blew a fog over the entire street. They could no longer see him.

“Oh no!” Loid tried to get up.

“No! Let’s run to the lake now! Those blue-eyes can’t see us!” Telerd grabbed Loid’s arm and pulled him under the stilts of the home. In the pitch black, they crawled to the other side where the boats were.

Soin already stood on the shore, waving over to them. “C-c-come on!”

Most of the boats were gone or sunk. The Sky Children were still firing on the fleeing villagers, but the smoke from behind them seemed to suddenly swallow them up. Loid dashed out to his friend, Telerd right on his heels. All three boys ran into the water then dived under, swimming after the boats that had survived.

The gunfire stopped only when the last of the villagers on the shore were dead. The few surviving boats floated away across Bekir Lake. And as the blue-eye sergeant’s vehicle rolled out of the crumbling inferno, the smoke filled the entire village like a cloud, the flames burning hotter until they shot up into the sky.

 

“What is that?” Kemdin murmured under his breath. His eyes were drawn to the light shining from the window. It had woken him from a fitful sleep. The general with brown eyes slept soundly in the bed, snoring and wrapping the blankets around him.

Kemdin slid on his rump near where the window overlooked the street, but still could not see over the edge. All he could catch was the eerie glow that was too early for dawn. Scooting back to the bed and rising to his feet, determined to see what the light was with a hope that a magician was attacking this Sky Child outpost, Kemdin grabbed hold of the bedpost and leaned the rest of his body out. This time he could see more through the glass than sky. He could see the land below. The view of the flat horizon that stretched towards the lake was flecked with stars, only there was a dark patch above where the light he had seen glowed. Blinking, Kemdin felt his heart beat hard as he stared at the distant yet bright glowing blaze that reflected on the lake with a tower of smoke.

Chapter Three: Inside Holes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Traveling to Roan inside of an automobile trunk was hot, uncomfortable, and dehydrating. The Sky Children only took Kemdin out when they stopped to stretch their muscles. On occasion they walked him to the bushes to relieve himself, though Kemdin had little food and water inside to sustained him, let alone to fertilize some plants. The blue-eye driver was the one that dragged him around, but General Gole was the one that gave him food and water.

One of their stops was at a large palace-like building along the iron road where Kemdin saw enormous iron carriages parked inside houses built for them, each with their rails that would lead them to the main one they had followed south. Kemdin stared at their shiny black painted shells. They looked like the beetles he and his friends used to catch on summer mornings, with horns on their noses, though the legs of these held wheels under them. And there were too many wheels for a regular carriage. The tops behind the horns had glass windows like eyes, and under the horns were snouts with teeth in the front as if grinning at its meal.

Behind the head of each of these colossal beetles, Kemdin saw a smaller cart that carried wood, piles and piles of it. Blue-eyes walked in and around these enormous beetles, wearing yet stranger clothes than those of the fancy merchants and the stiff brisk soldiers, one piece outfits the color of the sky, light blue with striped hats of blue and white. Among them were others with brown eyes that wore dirtier suits in the same shape in a gray color, hefting heavy pieces of metal, long hammers, and some pulling iron chains. Never had Kemdin imagined there were so many kinds of Sky Children in the world doing so many different things.

One of the oddest blue-eyes he met thus far was the one that approached General Gole when they had taken him out of the back of the automobile before going through the mountains. This demon was tall, but round in his middle as if his stomach or body were an inflated ball. His spindly legs trotted over to meet them, his hand taking out a round flat thing from his pocket while his other hand adjusted his short flat-topped hat. The driver had set Kemdin on the ground and locked his chains to a nearby structure that looked like a waiting cage for people. There was roof with glass walls in between the curving decorative iron bars to see through, but no doors to shut and lock it. Inside was a bench for sitting. The blue-eye driver sat almost immediately on it when he had Kemdin secured to the bottom leg.

The general spoke rapidly to the newcomer with the round belly, calling him Stationmaster and gesturing to the road alongside the waiting cage. His tone jumped in between his low threatening voice to a lighter more political one, one that General Gole had never used with humans. Kemdin didn’t understand the entire conversation anyway. Most adult talk came in the way his father used to discuss the cost of iron with the man from the hills near Herra. The general used words like ‘market shares’ and ‘economy’. Instead Kemdin gazed towards the Wede Mountains to the south that towered over the railroad station, peering at the impossible height of them. It was as if they touched the sky. He had heard of mountains, but this was the first time he had seen them. The trees on the foothills were so different from the ones near his village. However, seeing them, Kemdin shuddered.

Everyone knew that demons lurked in forests like these, different demons than those blue-eyes. Ever since he was very young he had heard stories from his mother about the sorts of demons in the world. Large demons. Small demons. Demons that ate humans, and demons that worked for witches. Demons that looked like humans and demons that were as hideous and disgusting as worms. Demons that carried diseases, and demons that destroyed murderers and brought out justice. Kemdin had only met the blue-eyed Sky Children, but they were bad enough.[1]

“…Well, I’ve authorized roads to be carved in and out of these mountains. The rail cannot take the difficulties of the mountains. You know we are tunneling through,” the general said.

Tunnel through a mountain? Through a mountain likely to be infested with demons? Kemdin wondered if they would use magic to do that or use this technology General Gole kept talking about. Then what would it be like? A machine that ate the earth of a mountain? In the past few days of traveling he had heard blue-eyes talking about a thing called an airplane, a flying carriage that would take the demons up in the air from city to city like a dragon. He imagined it, an iron dragon.

It couldn’t possibly be the last marvel he would see. He had ridden in a carriage that rolled without horses. He had watched one of those iron carriages come in, blowing steam and smoke, winding on its road like a snake from the station and past towards the north, letting people in and out. Anything now seemed possible.

“Of course I know there are still human villages in the mountains that resist us!” The general now snapped so loudly that Kemdin looked up, ducking to see if he were going to get beaten. “But they still only rely on magic. Technology conquers magic.”

“Yes, but have you ever fought against a conjured windstorm? Or lightening? Or how about a conjured dragon?” the stationmaster replied, looking smug as his rubbed along his belt line under his round belly, his blue eyes twinkling.

The general’s driver rolled his eyes, merely waiting for when they would go again. The journey tired him only somewhat more than the general. It was a day’s trip to Roan where the general had told Kemdin he would begin training as a private slave. Most likely the driver was looking forward to a break.

General Gole laughed. “Conjure a dragon? Don’t you know anything about this world’s demons? Even if a magician were fool enough to conjure a dragon, the dragon would eat the conjurer and then flee from our cannons. Dragons are not controllable. They know this.”

“But it would not fly off before setting things on fire first,” the stationmaster replied.

“Including the conjurer,” the driver murmured.

“Those humans are not that foolish.” General Gole nodded to him. “And as for windstorms and their lightening, we have already used technology to go through them. Besides, I have executed every magician that has dared oppose us. Those magicians are fleeing the land. It is only the peasants that we have to be concerned about now. Their witches do not conjure dragons. And their wizards[2], who know it is damned foolish to move lightening about where your own armies are hiding, have been running from us. Besides, these days there are few left to oppose us except clawing vagabonds that will be eaten by the very demons in the forest they hide in. In fact, I have word that on the western front we have forced the Kitai armies so far back that soon their armies will break and we will flood into the western wild and civilize it also.”

“With what rail?” the stationmaster said, pulling out his flat round box again and peering at the front of it. Up close, Kemdin saw that there were numbers on the front and around the edge. The thing was brass, shiny, with a glass face. Parts inside moved as if by magic. He wondered if it were a magician’s item the blue-eyes had stolen. The demon said, “We’ve only laid track as far as Kalsworth. The humans in Westerlund keep hindering the rail laying over there.”

The general smiled, lifting his chin. “I pity your dependence on the rail for travel. As I keep saying, give Westhaven roads or better still, build a fleet of automobiles with sturdy tires, and we can roll into the western wild without a rail.”

The stationmaster merely snorted and turned.

“How is it that you remember automobiles but have no confidence in them?” the general asked, watching him go with growing annoyance.

Remembering. They always talked about remembering. Kemdin didn’t understand how all the blue-eyes talked of remembering things that were new to their world. The general never talked about him remembering them, just the others. However, the general’s driver tilted his head to look at stationmaster as if asking the same question the general had.

Lifting his chest, the stationmaster replied, “I remember also the pollution and how they broke down so often. You have to have a repair kit in your vehicle all the time. Changing tires? What about it overheating? Our trains are efficient and safe. They work for the common good.”

“And I know that trains can also be derailed,” the general said. He turned, gesturing for his driver to pick Kemdin up to drag him back to the auto’s trunk.

Stifling a moan, Kemdin felt the demon grab hold of his arm and heave him onto his feet. The blue-eye then kicked behind his legs to make him walk. Kemdin shuffled his feet under the weight of his leg irons, already anticipating the pain of the rest of the journey in baking darkness. The longer he took, the more the pain would be delayed.

“Besides,” the general said to the stationmaster, “There is freedom in an automobile. And I think you are afraid of it.”

The blue-eye lifted Kemdin back into the trunk. Hearing only the echo of the general speak as the driver slammed the trunk closed over him, Kemdin shut his eyes, wishing the vehicle had been made out of wood. He could have broken the carriage if it had been wood. Then he could have fallen out and crawled away unseen, maybe even run back home. However, the vehicle shook as the driver had then opened a door for the general.

“…Foolish, nearsighted idiot. I keep telling them…” The door slammed shut, making Kemdin’s ears ring. “…economy. Don’t they know what is at stake? Corporal Salis, you understand, right?”

“Yes, sir,” the driver said, closing another door.

Kemdin slapped his hands to his ears. Next would come the rumble of noise that made the automobile go. Curling into a ball, he pulled his head towards his knees, listening to the whine of engine start. Then it roared. It felt like he had been carried in the belly of a demon, and Kemdin wished that it would all end. He was tired, but could hardly sleep. He was sore but lying down only made him more so. Unable to imagine life away from the village he had grown up in, he wished not to exist at all.

*

“…I keep telling them that the automobile is key to winning against Kitai. The Kitai don’t have autos. They still only ride horses,” Gailert said.

“Yes, sir,” his driver said, turning the wheel and steering back into the road. Here on the foothills of the Wede Mountains the roads were perfect. The general had made it so when he oversaw the construction of lower mountain cities. He even had them build the road that led up to the city on the top peak that they were still building. Danslik was to be a masterpiece, but Gailert was not to oversee that. Already the Sky Lord had ordered an ambitious captain to head that operation. Perhaps even the Sky Lord had decided that General Gailert Winstrong was getting too old.

The general closed his eyes and let them rest. It was best to. After all, training a servant would be difficult, especially a willful human boy.

Their journey into the mountains and through the trees went peacefully. There was no need to worry anyway. These woods had long been cleansed of demons. The demon crows that had been created by some crafty witch had fled back to their origins, probably in the Kirting Mountains, or more likely to the Southern forests near Maldos Territory where the demons were still persistent and savage. Goles even had left the Wede Mountains, knowing that bullets could pierce their thick skin and cause their super sensitive body to suffer severe pain even if it took many to actually kill them. Besides even if a singular Gole were stupid enough to attack a Sky Child, no matter how fast it was it could not outrun an automobile even if it were ravenously hungry.

So, they entered Roan around the time as the sun was setting. The doors to the walled city opened for them and closed for them when the driver hailed the guards. And as they rolled up the hill towards the city center, Gailert yawned and stretched, glancing at his handiwork. Almost all the wooden homes had been replaced with stone. Only a few of the human medieval habitations still stood, but then the slaves had to have some place to sleep. The humans’ own former town officials were given quarters more fit for progress with real doors and windows. And so far they seemed satisfied with it.

Driving the winding road up to his home for a true rest, Gailert hoped that his cook had anticipated him with a meal. The street lamps were already lighting when they reached the higher district, and he was eager to climb out of the automobile after that long stretch of being so far from home for so long.

“We are here, sir,” the driver said. He then turned to face Gailert. “Do you have any more orders for me, General Winstrong, before I take the automobile back to the garage?”

Gailert shook his head. “No, Corporal. Head on home and take a good rest. We both deserve it.”

Smiling, the corporal nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

He unbuckled his seat belts and opened his door, making sure that the car was in park before climbing out. He then walked back to the general’s side door and opened it, bowing.

“Do you need me to handle your slave?” the driver asked.

“Oh!” Gailert slapped his forehead. “I completely forgot about him. The drive must have tired me out. Yes. Take him out and hand him to my porter.”

With a slight chiding grin, the driver nodded and did as ordered. Gailert climbed out of the vehicle carrying his own bag. He walked up the steps to his door and glanced at the brass knocker. It had been so long since he had been home that he felt somewhat inclined to knock at his own door. However, he drew out his keys and immediately unlocked it, hearing the grunting of both his driver and one ornery human child on the walk. Glancing back, he saw the child’s eyes go wide, lifting to stare up at the height of the building and then around at the street, which undoubtedly was beyond his limited imagination.

“Do you really want him indoors with you?” the driver asked. “He will dirty up the carpet.”

“Just hand him to my porter,” Gailert said again. “He’ll wash the whelp up and stick him where he’ll sleep tonight. I intend to start training him tomorrow.”

“You are not going to even rest?” his driver said, smirking and dragging the boy across the cobblestones. “I would have thought this trip had taken much out of you.”

Gailert sighed, but shook his head. “No, Corporal. Training must begin immediately.”

With a shrug, his driver dragged the child the rest of the way. Gailert opened the door and stepped into the darkened hallway. Perhaps they had not anticipated him at all. Reaching for the bell pull in the entrance hall, he pulled the cord.

A brass bell clanged in the back of the home inside the servants’ hall. Answering it, Gailert heard a tired mutter and groan. The door then creaked and footfalls struck the hardwood floor. In three seconds a tall blue-eyed Sky Child adjusting his suit coat and vest marched in, then stopped just short of the vestibule.

“General Winstrong! You’re home early!” The man then continued to cover the distance, glancing over his master to the driver who dragged in the sullen boy with the patchy white and brown hair. “And you have a…a human child with you. Does this mean you have decided to take my advice and acquired a squire?”

With a gentle snort, Gailert stepped further into the vestibule, reaching over to the light switch to turn it on. The small front room lit, illuminating the familiar walls and paintings of home. “I think calling this boy a squire would be a bit much. Consider him my footman or maybe my hand in training.”

“Hand, sir?” the porter asked as the driver shoved the boy forward for the porter to take.

Gailert gestured for him to take the child also. “I don’t quite have the proper term yet for it. I can’t call him my page or something more intelligent. And I really don’t want to call him my slave, though at this point he will be doing such work until I can civilize him.”

“Not to offend, sir, but I doubt that such a human can be civilized,” the porter said, seizing the boy by the arm as the driver had insisted, clenching a tight hold with a fierce warning glare for the child to behave. “He doesn’t look high born, even for a human.”

The driver bowed to them both then walked back out onto the street, closing the door behind him.

“He’s not,” Gailert replied as he crossed the threshold to the stairs, turning on another lamp to see where he was going. They lit up all the way to the second floor where the maid was already looking down and dressed in her nightgown and shawl. “He’s a working man’s son. A smithy’s boy. So he is not a stranger to hard work. I thought that a better choice than a child who has never worked a day in his life.”

“An aristocrat’s child would have been more dignified,” his porter said, dragging the boy to the base of the stairs but not going up.

“Yes, but he also would have sobbed more and complained a great deal when we made him work,” said Gailert. “This child will not. Already I see that he will be silent, and I prefer that.”

“Agreed, sir. Silence is preferable.” But the porter shook the boy. “But this one looks like a rapscallion. What is with his hair? One of his eyebrows is almost entirely white.”

Gailert turned with a sudden chuckle. “Ah, yes. That. Well, actually his hair has gone white from fear. Fear of me.”

The porter stared at the boy he was holding.

“Now take that boy to the cellar and lock him in for the night. Give him some bread and water so he won’t faint.” Gailert walked off before his porter could ask anything more.

Entering his room with a sigh of relief. Gailert set his suitcase on the floor. He walked to his writing table and drew out his chair and sat in it. Reaching over to the lamp, he clicked it on. As the room illuminated, he drew in another breath and exhaled with relief. At last civilization. Perhaps now he could start preparing to retire, or at least get ready for a long vacation. The training of his slave would come first, but that would only lead to future rest.

He rose from his seat and turned to his bureau. Opening it, he gathered clothes for bed. Taking his house robe from off its peg, he walked across the hall to the bath where he would really be able to begin relaxing.

*

There was a strange moan about the house when the tall blue-eye in strange clothes dragged him down into a dark damp smelling stone pit below the enormous house. The moan was unexplainable, but then it went away with the distant sound of falling water to replace it. The room Kemdin was carried into must have been a dungeon. Kemdin expected to be tossed into one like in all those stories about captives taken to the palace of the wicked magician for some experiment to create a demon. However, the floor was not wet, nor was there any straw upon it. It was swept and dry. Along the walls were shelves upon shelves of glass jars filled with what looked like fruit and pickled meats and vegetables. Dried roots and herbs hung from the ceiling and large barrels stood on the floor. Looking around, Kemdin searched for the cage or perhaps the torture devices the demon would use to pull his body apart.

Along one wall was a table and a hearth stove like in the smithy shop. A low fire burned in it with a large metal canister on top. Extending up from the canister were somewhat thick rods going in and out and the rumble of what sounded like rocks tossing around against the metal. It stood on legs that looked too heavy to lift.

The tall blue-eye that had dragged him in the deep room gave Kemdin one look, picked up a rope from a hook near a collection of what looked like farming tools, then shoved him to the floor next to the furnace. The demon spoke through his teeth. “If you wish to live, you will obey every word, boy. Now sit and don’t touch anything.”

Kemdin stared up at him. The blue-eye unwound the rope and began to tie Kemdin’s ankle chains to the furnace’s leg.

“I am the general’s porter. I am also the head of the household while the master is away. That makes me your master. Understand?”

Kemdin did not budge.

“I said, understand?” The porter raised his voice. “Understand?”

Pulling back, Kemdin just stared at him.

“Speak! You can, can’t you?” the porter snapped.

Trembling, Kemdin nodded. “I understand.”

Rising to his tall height, the porter nodded. “Good.”

He turned and walked back to the stone stairs. Kemdin felt sick inside where his stomach had been gnawing itself.

“There is one rule in this house.” The porter turned before going up. “Do what I say. And I say, speak only when you are spoken to. I say, do exactly as you are told without a word. I say, do not touch anything in this room or in the rest of the house.” The porter’s face tightened with each sentence. “I say, do only what you are told. For if you disobey me I will not only beat you within an inch of your life, but I will also make sure that you are forever hungry—no matter what the master says.

“And if you tell him that I have disobeyed him, I will cut off the tips of your fingers, your nose, your ears, and any other appendage that sticks out until you are nothing left but a head and a body. Then I will deliver you personally to a Gole so he can eat out your heart while it still beats. Understand?”

Kemdin pulled his arms and legs close to his body, nodding vigorously. “Yes…sir.”

The demon nodded then walked up the stairs to the upper floor.

It had been a cruel trick. Entering the home, seeing the enormity of it, Kemdin had believed that maybe it would not be so bad. But here in the darkness lit only by the glow of the hearth he was put back into the place these demons wanted him. He was property and a prisoner. Returning home was no longer even a slight possibility. He was captive for good.

*

The morning after his return, just after he had a good breakfast and was dressed, Gailert marched down to the cellar where the boy was sleeping on the ground. Undoubtedly the boy had been terrorized a bit by his porter the night before, but that was to be expected. The child had to learn to respect his masters before they could start with anything else.

He called to his porter. “Take the boy out to the yard in back and have him washed. I want him in clean breeches, no shirt. When he learns to behave correctly, we’ll provide him with a shirt. Until then, he will learn his place. Then bring him to me when he is ready.”

The porter bowed and then turned his eyes to the child. The boy was already staring up at them both with horror, perhaps gaining more white hairs.

Turning, Gailert marched back upstairs and to his study to read his mail, study the legal forms sent to him during his absence, and sign the necessary documents for the continuation of work within his district. It took a few hours to do, but it filled the time it took to wait for the return of his new acquisition. His porter held the boy by his arm, shoving the scrubbed child to his knees on the study’s carpet.

Gailert peered down at the boy and reached over to his face inspecting the tense yet still hostile look in the child’s eyes. He lifted the boy’s chin and said, “You know, there are people who believe that the history of one man can be read simply from looking into his eyes.”

The boy’s eyes flickered, looking to the general’s as if to read them. It made Gailert smile.

“Your eyes have flecks of gray and yellow in them. I see small holes that indicate pain,” he said. “Perhaps you broke an arm when you were a very young.”

But then he glanced down and touched the obvious burn mark on the boy’s chest. It was practically square; the size of a coin, yet indented just above the sternum leaning towards his heart.

“Oh. That’s right. I had forgotten.” Gailert felt the boy tremble as he touched the scar. “You were the intended sacrifice that day. Funny how life changes on a pin tip.”

The boy’s chest heaved as if he wished to pounce on the general. But he held his place, though the porter boxed the boy’s ears, forcing the child to cower again.

Gailert rose. “I see. We have much work to do with you.”

Of course, the general wondered where to start. The idea of a boy doing odd jobs for him around the home and on his journeys had sounded like a good idea at the time, but with that wild thing kneeling there in his study he was starting to wonder which tasks to start with.

With a shrug, he said, “Alright. I have it. You will train with house cleaning first. You will do everything my man, Saimon, here tells you to do. You will mostly carry things for us until you are stronger and steadier for other work.”

The boy lowered his head.

The porter boxed his ears. “What do you say, boy?”

Cringing, his new slave looked up at his new master though there was spite on his face. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Gailert sighed and turned back to his work, taking up yet another document and scanning the contents. “Go to it immediately.”

The porter yanked on the boy’s arm. “Follow me. We have work in the yard first. Then you will help the cook.”

The child looked back only once at Gailert before going.

*

Kemdin felt there was something strange about that brown-eyed Sky Child. Besides being a murderer, he talked as if such bloody things were merely like catching fish for supper. Sure, the demon fed him meat, bread and milk and the occasional potato, but that was like feeding an animal to keep up his strength. Yet when Kemdin worked in the yard carrying the wood pieces the gardener had chopped for the fire, General Gole stood in the doorway and watched him much in the same way his uncle had watched him and his father forge arrowheads. And when he had been made to pluck the chickens for the general’s supper then clean up the feathers, the demon laughed as if he were truly amused.

Then there was the way the general regularly summoned Kemdin into his study, making him sit on a chair of that amazingly furry fabric and listen to him lecture from one of his strange books from his library. Most of it was boring talk with words like ‘economy’ and ‘gross national product’ and ‘transportation’ again. He used the word ‘progress’ a lot, and described humans as ‘medieval’, whatever that meant. Then after the hours were spent and the sun had gone low in the sky, the general often walked him down the cellar stairs himself to where he had the maids create a small bed for Kemdin on the ground so that he could be awake early the next morning for the day’s work all over again.

General Gole—or rather General Gailert Winstrong as the people who came in and out of the house called him—was like that fabled two tongued demon who in stories could transform into a snake and a human that constantly tricked and lured people away into his den. He spoke silvery tongued to many of those that he did business with, wealthy humans and blue-eyes alike. But when the general was among the soldiers, he spoke harsh and brisk just as he had in the village. He dragged Kemdin along to carry things for him on errands in the city. At least then he was allowed to ride inside the back seat rather than in the trunk with their parcels. But his view of the double-tongued demon let him know that General Gailert Winstrong was dangerous even among the other Sky Children.

People bowed to the general everywhere they went on foot. Kemdin trailed after him in his bare feet and chains, often shaking from the weight of his chains on his legs that prevented him from keeping up when the general walked fast. When the general wanted him, he merely called Kemdin boy then expected him to hurry. One of the wealthy humans once asked Kemdin’s name, but Kemdin was not allowed to speak unless the general allowed it. And he didn’t. The general had answered for him, “He has no name.”

The human had paled and bowed his head, apologizing for asking.

That was how it was. He was the boy. He was called Winstrong’s boy. He was the general’s boy. No one spoke to him directly unless they were ordering him to take the general something. That usually happened when he was with the general at the military office, often sitting on the stoop waiting for the general to order him about and carry something. Those that ordered him there never expected him to speak. In fact, Kemdin often went through a day without uttering one word. So when it was night and he was sure the general and all the house staff were asleep he would whisper to the fire words to songs his mother and father had taught him.

After the first month, Kemdin went with the general to the neighboring city of Gibbis where they stayed with another Sky Child general, though this one had blue eyes and a more wrinkled face. He also had a human slave, a footman who wore a prim vest over his bare chest, laced up, with leather wrist cuffs to remind him he was still a captive. That man’s legs were not chained either. But the way the young man walked it was as if he were still chained. The footman hardly looked at Kemdin when he escorted the general to his quarters, and he said not one word when he rolled into his bed in the servants’ wing that night where Kemdin was tossed a blanket and a stiff pillow against the growing cold of the autumn. Even in the morning after, the footman said no word to him but tugged on Kemdin’s ear to gesture where they would have to go to help out the staff.

The cook was in charge here. She was also the head maid, called the lady of the house. “You, boy. Carry this.”

She dropped a heavy pot into his arms then turned expecting for him to follow. The lady of the house was a brown-eyed Sky Child perhaps only a bit younger than the general herself. Most of the staff in the house was human. Half of them had leg irons. Not one spoke when the cook was around. However, when she was gone they started to whisper. Despite that, Kemdin was to be with her the entire day unless the general called for him.

“I don’t know if I can trust you with a knife,” the cook said, gesturing for Kemdin to set the pot on a stove.

She had another servant already stoking the fire. That one was a young woman with burns on her hands. Her leg irons looked tight, and her ankles were swollen. She ducked when the cook lifted up an iron poker.

“You, hurry it up with the fire!” The cook jabbed the girl with the poker before handing it to her. The lady of the house then turned on Kemdin, shoving a bucket of potatoes at him. “Wash these and then peel them.”

Kemdin caught the weight of the bucket and backed into where there was a worn wood stool. He took up the empty bucket another servant handed him while gesturing to the pump for water. There were many things Kemdin had learned about the Sky Children. One was that they had ways of making water rise from their wells without magic. The general called it a hand pump. The porter called the pipes that came from the furnace to the cellar ceiling plumbing. All of these things were new, but things he was expected to know now that he was a Sky Child’s slave. So, going to the hand pump, he filled it full of water and carried it back to his stool to wash the potatoes.

As he scrubbed each potato with cold water then piled them in a clean bucket, Kemdin listened to the bustle and whispers of the servants of this house. The cook worked on her bread, mixing, kneading and then shaping them into loaves. She had two Sky Children helpers, hired hands that brought in milk, eggs, and ham from a vendor outside and cleaned the delicate parts of their master’s home. The hired workers came and went, often setting and serving breakfast for both their master and his, though it still felt too early for them to be up yet.

Finished with the potatoes, Kemdin rose from his stool, growing nervous. The knife the cook wanted him to use to peel the potatoes rested on the table. He picked it up, feeling the wood handle under his fingers, rolling it into his palm—but his arms tingled as he held it. The general never let him hold a knife. It had been forbidden him, actually. Just like using the axe to chop wood had been forbidden him. He was not to have anything that could be used as a weapon. Not yet.

So here, Kemdin sat back on his stool holding the knife that reminded him of the knives his grandfather had taught him to make. In fact, their shop made better knives. His last smithing lesson was dagger-making. Kemdin had been proud of the dagger that he had smelted, forged, folded, hammered, and sharpened. It had been a work of art. That dagger was perhaps still hiding under the hearthstones of his father’s shop, untouched, undiscovered.

A hand snatched the knife from Kemdin’s fingers. Another hand boxed his ears.

Clenching his head, Kemdin barely heard the words the blue-eye driver shouted at the cook as he kicked Kemdin off the stool and through the door to the yard. “…have a knife! Didn’t your master tell you? That boy is still hardly trained!”

“That little thing?” the cook snapped back at the corporal. “What can a scrawny boy like that do? He was just going to peel potatoes!”

“Didn’t you see the way he was looking at that knife?” the general’s driver shouted. “He could have stabbed you with it.”

The lady of the house gave him a dry look. “Stab me? I’d a knocked his head off first.”

“The kid’s father aided raiders,” the driver said. “He was an insurgent.”

And that silenced the woman. All the servants hushed up and stared at Kemdin. Their eyes widened with actual fear.

“That’s right. His father was a smithy.” He then jabbed Kemdin between his shoulder blades with the end of the knife so that it pricked him. Kemdin ducked forward to get away. His irons clanging, he tripped on the backyard stone. “And this kid learned to make arrowheads. So don’t you think he’s harmless?”

He grabbed hold of Kemdin’s hair, pulling up to look into his face. “And I haven’t forgotten it.” 

Kemdin trembled, staring at the demon’s blue-eyes, waiting for him to suck him dry.

But the driver dropped him to the stone. He kicked him once in the side. “Keep him in the yard. The general doesn’t need him handling knives, fire, or anything sharp. If you don’t have work for him, make him sit over there. We’ll collect him when we want him.”

Shrugging, the cook waved over to the footman to take Kemdin back to the woodpile where they were plucking chickens. He set Kemdin down and handed him one of the dead birds. Kemdin still rubbed his head, but he picked up the chicken and started to pull out its feathers. The driver gave him a hard look, then turned and walked back out of the yard into the kitchen.

Soon the bustle of the morning returned. Everyone was back to working. Kemdin finished with his plucking then was a made to sit as the servants cleaned up the feathers and started in with the laundry. They talked in whispers, hardly lifting their heads. Their eyes on their tasks, the bustled here and there, scrubbing and hanging the sheets and clothes of their master and the house filled the hours until the sun was high.

Kemdin shifted his feet in his chains. He watched the ants crawl through the cracks in lines. A grasshopper jumped out off a leaf then flitted with its wings over the wall to the neighboring yard. As the sheets filled the lines, fluttering in the autumn wind like clouds, a dragonfly hovered off of a leaf and zipped over the lines passing Kemdin’s view until it too went over the wall. Then one of the girls sat next to him on the bench, stretching out her legs. She sighed then yawned.

He did not look up. He didn’t dare to. It was likely the driver would come around the corner to box his ears again.

But then he felt a something cold touch his back. He jerked almost with a shout.

“Oh! Don’t—” The girl put a hand to his mouth, whispering near his ear. “I did not mean to startle you. I just wanted clean the cut.”

Kemdin looked up at her. She touched his face and turned his head away again.

“Do not look at me. It is better you do not see me,” she said. She continued to touch his back between his shoulder blades. “You were cut. But it does not look deep. I will clean it.”

“Why—?”

She put her fingers to his mouth.

“Don’t speak. I don’t doubt that you were forbidden to speak, and I do not wish to see you beaten.”

The cold wet feeling dabbed down his back. A shiver ran with it as the cool wind made his wet skin feel cold. He pulled his arms closer to keep warm feeling her wipe away the remaining dribble of blood. It had trailed even down to the top edge of his breeches. It was hard not to jump from the cold or her touch, but Kemdin pulled his arms tight to his sides to keep from moving. When she was done, she rested her hand gently on his back then patted his head, running her fingers through the tufts of white in his hair.

“You are very brave. But now be a good boy and do as your master tells you.” Her voice whispered as if it were the wind blowing through the drying clothes. “And keep your eyes where they should be. And one day, you may find freedom at your feet. And when you do, run.”

Kemdin wanted to look up, but his eyes were fixed on his chained ankles. There was no running with those chains still on. There was no escape until they were gone, and that would never happen.

The woman rose then walked away. He never did get to see which one she was.

And as the servants gathered the dry laundry in the afternoon sun, Kemdin lifted his eyes to draw in a breath, as his view of the coming storm clouds was no longer obstructed.

*

“What do you mean you left him out there?” Gailert asked the lady of the house as she flustered, red in her cheeks. “Call in my boy now and have him dried off before he catches a cold!”

     “Your man, that corporal, ordered that he stay out there near the woodshed until we have work for him, and we don’t have work for him,” she snapped.

Rolling his eyes, the Gailert gave her a disapproving look. “Have some common sense, woman. If it rains, take in my human boy. You wouldn’t leave your own servants out there, would you?”

She shook her head as if she found the conversation ridiculous to begin with, turning to the door to collect the child that had been shivering out in the yard since the rain started to fall. “Well your man, who sent him out when I was following common sense in the first place, nearly bit my head off. I wasn’t about to have a repeat of that. But if you want the boy, I’ll fetch him for you. But he’s not drying off in this house and leaving a watermark on my floor.”

“I don’t know what altercation you had between my driver and yourself, but if you don’t get that boy out of the rain and dry right now, I will be angry with you,” Gailert said. “And if he gets sick and dies, I will require full compensation for my money and time training him.”

The lady of the house did not talk back, but Gailert could tell from her posture that she was arguing in her head against him anyway. She had always been sassy, even for a brown-eyed Sky Child. Her attitude was perhaps the only thing keeping her in the position as lady of the house rather than just a cook since she intimidated even blue-eyed Sky Children. But for him, he just found it irritating.

It was three minutes before she had his boy standing in the kitchen wrapped up in a wool blanket. By that time Gailert had gone to see if she had done what he had ordered. She was tugging at the white tufts in the boy’s hair before shrugging with a gesture to the cook stove for him to sit. The boy sat down with a glance at the general as if to ask for permission. Gailert smiled and shook his head.

“Give him some broth to drink. When he is dry and warm, send him into the study. I have work for him there,” he said.

The cook lifted her eyebrows and glanced back at the boy. “Work in the study for that thing? Doing what?”

“Just send him,” Gailert said then he left the room.

He returned to the study where his friend and the master of the home had been waiting, drinking hot tea with an eye on the storm outside. The retired general looked up when Gailert entered and asked, “So, was the boy sick with the flu already?”

“Hypothermia, maybe.” Gailert snickered, taking his chair. “Now where were we?”

“We were discussing the conditions of drainage on the roads. You did have them built arched with gutters, right?” his friend the retired general asked.

Nodding, Gailert sighed. “Of course. I took all of that into consideration. You should recall last winter when the snows fell that I even took ice into account.”

“And what of heavy snowfall?” his friend asked, sipping his tea.

Gailert smiled. “Lemmun, I have proposed the construction of plows, even for the rails.”

“Snowed over rails,” General Lemmun murmured. “I wonder how much they have considered that.”

“I’m sure Governor Shillig is considering it since he has made himself so dependent on the rails,” Gailert said.

“But his altitude in comparison to ours, and proximity to the ocean, does affect the ice build up and snow, doesn’t it?” General Lemmun set down his cup. “What I am concerned about mostly is the affect weather will have on the new telegraph lines. I realize the system has been perfected, but this is telegraph we are talking about. High winds, snows, winter in Westhaven is killer.”

“Yes,” Gailert murmured, taking up his own teacup. “Which makes me worry about the city construction of Danslik. I am concerned that the city in the clouds will not become the haven the captain is imagining. Danslik peak is the highest peak in the territory. The air itself would be very thin. And what about transporting crops up there? Winters would be treacherous.”

“Perhaps that is why Captain Callens is suggesting we build the first airport there,” General Lemmun said. “I can’t imagine any other reason why he would want to promote it since nowhere else is equipped with airplanes yet.”

The cook cleared her throat.

Both men turned and watched her shove the boy forward. He was still wrapped in the blanket.

“I can’t dry his breeches while his legs are still chained together. He ought to be wearing lace-ups,” she said. “You better have him standing because I won’t stand for him leaving a watermark.”

The cook turned and walked out of the room, not giving them a chance to respond. Both generals, retired and not, turned to the other and shrugged. Gailert motioned to the boy.

“Come in boy. Stand there.” Gailert pointed to a spot on the rug.

Hanging his head like he always did, keeping his eyes watchful yet as silent as the day he had been picked up, the boy did as he was told. He still shivered, pulling the blanket over his bare arms. His hair stuck out from a vigorous rubbing.

“Well, what do you think?” Gailert turned to General Lemmun.

Closing one eye, General Lemmun peered at the boy for a full two minutes. Then he grunted and sat back. “He doesn’t look that smart.”

Gailert gave a laugh.

“Just trust me. He’s working out well. I got him trained to fetch things. He knows more than most humans. Watch this—” He waved to the boy and said, “Go get me the dictionary.”

The boy blinked, turned his head and looked around the room. He hesitated then apprehensively stepped towards the bookshelf across the room. Dropping the blanket on the stool, the boy stood up to where he touched the binding of several of the large volumes there. He paused several times before selecting one and carrying it back to the table where Gailert had his tea.

“You said dictionary. This is my atlas,” General Lemmun said with a snicker.

Gailert sighed.

“It does look like my dictionary. Same color and size.” He then peered at the boy who was hanging his head as if waiting for his ears to be boxed. “I don’t suppose you know how to read, do you?”

The boy looked up. He paused, searching to see if he was meant to speak.

Gailert waited.

The boy at last said, “No, sir.”

“How do you learn without knowing how to read?” Gailert asked him.

Knowing now that the man was waiting for response, the boy who had said not much more than yes, sir, no, sir choked and then licked his lips before whispering. “I watch, sir.”

“Do you want to know how to read?” Gailert asked him.

His eyes growing wide, the boy opened his mouth but hardly could speak.

“Can’t he talk? Is he an idiot?” General Lemmun exclaimed.

But Gailert shook his head. “Not an idiot. But I do think he is afraid.”

The boy ducked his head.

“It would be handy for me if he could read,” Gailert murmured aloud. “He could fetch things for me by reading the signs and covers. And that would be such a time saver.”

“But teaching a slave to read is also dangerous,” General Lemmun said, lifting his teacup again to peer at the insides. “And though I realize that you are an idealist with dreams of civilized humans, I must say that you really ought to start with a cultured, more passive human than some former…whatever he was.”

“Laborer?” Gailert asked with a smirk. “Really, Lemmun, don’t you think that an educated laborer would ease the troubles of management?”

The retired general merely shrugged. “I suppose. But I can’t stand the idea of some slave reading labels for poisons.”

“The humans have used a writing system, you know,” Gailert said.

“Which scribes, patriarchs, and magicians used,” General Lemmun said. “The common folk are too simple to understand it.”

Gailert laughed and rose from his seat. “Coming from a man who remembers a history of a ninety percent literacy rate of a population, I find your argument ironic.”

The boy seemed to wobble on his feet, yet he remained at attention as if afraid to move. Gailert picked up the wool blanket and put it back on the boy’s shoulders. He then directed the boy to the bench.

“No watermark,” General Lemmun warned with a chuckle.

Grinning back with a shake of his head, Gailert picked up a blank sheet of paper and a nib pen off of the desk, also taking up the ink well. He put all three things on the small table next to the bench. The boy shook, peering at him as Gailert started to write out letters on the page. “Boy, I am going to teach you how to write and read. Once you have learned this, you are going to do much more useful work for me. Now this letter is called Bet. Say it, Bet.”

The boy looked up at him and then sighed, repeating, “Bet.”

“Good. Now take this pen, and write Bet for me,” Gailert said.

But this did not go as smoothly. Gailert had to reposition the boy’s hold of the pen. The child had first held it like he would a knife to stab someone then he held it like human peasant eating sticks. In the end, Gailert had to position his pen and hold the boy’s hand in the correct position, dip the pen and then help him write the shape.

“Write it and say it,” Gailert said, forming the letter. “Bet.”

Sighing, clenching the pen, the boy scratched out a shaky shape. “Bet. Bet. Bet. Bet….”

“Keep it up and go across the page,” Gailert said. “Then I will show you the next letter.”

“Bet. Bet. Bet. Bet. Bet. Bet….”

“How can you stand that? It is so tedious,” General Lemmun said.

There was a smile on Gailert’s lips as he answered. “Didn’t even you have to practice the writing when they handed you the memory of the letters?”

Huffing, the retired general lifted his shoulders. “Well, yes. Of course. A passed on memory does not account for muscle memory. But repeating Bet over and over again is so tiresome.”

Gailert’s smile had not vanished. “Yes, but that is how those who learn their knowledge firsthand acquire memory. And believe me, after this work, this child will not forget his letters—much better than those who take for granted a memory merely passed on to them.”

General Lemmun only shrugged and sipped the rest of his tea.

“Now for letter Ket. It looks like Bet only it is wider and the shape goes down like this and up like this,” Gailert said. “Now repeat it and say Ket.”

“Ket. Ket. Keh…ke…eh…eh…choo!”

The boy sneezed then rubbed his nose. Black ink smeared from his stained fingers across his face.

General Lemmun snorted, covering a laugh. “Oh, yes. He’s catching on. Just make sure he doesn’t use that ink for war paint.”

“Just drink your tea,” Gailert said, and reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, wiping his boy’s face.

*

Kemdin peered at his ink-stained fingers that night as he lay on his back. The sounds of the letters repeated in his head over and over again like the boom of a drum. Bet, Ket, Det, Fet, Get, Het, Jit, Let, Men, Nen, Chet, Than, Pen, Ran, Set, Shat, Tet, Vin, Wan, Yit, and Zan. The general said he would teach him the vowels later. Kemdin already knew his numbers. That had impressed the general, though the other one did not seem as much impressed. The two Sky Children had talked about the state of a thing called the educational system and literacy after Kemdin had finished copying each symbol he had memorized. And though Kemdin knew the names of the marks, he still did not understand why he had to learn them or what they meant. All he knew was that he had to learn them or he would anger the general.

Closing his eyes, the list of shapes and their names repeated. Bet, Ket, Det, Fet, Get, Het, Jit, Let, Men, Nen, Chet…. Their vertical marks like slashes on the page were familiar in a way. He had seen them before. In fact, they were everywhere, but Kemdin had assumed they were decoration, designs like those his father had put on his swords.

Writing. It was something new. Not like tallying, which he understood. Now Reading? Listening to the old men, there was one thing Kemdin did understand, and that was if he learned these marks he would know things that most humans did not. Hidden in these marks was a secret knowledge of the ancients that the magicians used. If was to read, then he would learn to read everything.

 

[1] See the Jonis Scrolls if you are interested in knowing all the varieties of demons.

[2] To know the differences between witches, magicians, and wizards in this world, read the Jonis Scrolls.

Chapter Four: Up and Down Hills

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The boy was an astute learner. General Winstrong was right about the child’s ability to absorb information and use it. The boy had gone from writing his letters and numbers from memory in a week to reading the writing off of the covers of the general’s library books and fetching documents. He wasn’t as fast as a Sky Child his age that had learned from passed memory, but his skill did equal that of a brown-eyed that learned writing. In fact, he was faster. That troubled Gailert some.

Watching the boy during his errands, Gailert noticed how the child’s eyes flickered from the signs on the street, reading every single one of them, to the writing on packages, address labels, and most startlingly, the wall map at the military post. Though the boy still did not talk unless ordered to, a much-appreciated trait to be sure, his eye did show that he understood much of the conversations around him and he listened intently. Because of that, Gailert came to a sad but necessary conclusion.

“Boy!” He called into the dark cellar. It was long after supper and his porter had sent the boy to bed hours ago. Saimon himself was resting in his quarters as it was very late. “Come up here.”

The boy’s chains rustled. Gailert could hear the child rise from the floor. Shuffling from the weight of his bonds, the boy crossed the room then climbed the stairs, stopping midway when he could see Gailert’s face. “Yes, sir?”

“I have been watching you, and I know you are up to something,” Gailert said.

The boy’s eyes widened. “No, sir.”

The defiance was insufferable. Just seeing it, just hearing it, Gailert swung out and struck the child across the face. “How dare you defy me? I’ve been watching you! You have been reading everything in front of you! Even private documents and military maps!”

Clenching his face, the boy ducked against the wall. “But you wanted me to read!”

Gailert struck him again. The boy fell backward, rolling down the stairs. His body flopped, landing a yard from the foot of the steps. Stomping down after him, Gailert bent over and heaved the child off the floor by his arms and shook him.

“You will not be insubordinate! What have you read?” He shouted.

Already the boy was making that irritating crying, his chains rattling as he tried to cover his face from more blows, or perhaps to hide his eyes that would show what he was really thinking.

Dropping him to the ground, Gailert kicked at him. “What have you read?”

The boy continued to wordlessly cry, lifting his arms up to protect himself.

“What have you read?” the general shouted again.

“Everything!” the boy cried out, flopping against the ground. “You wanted me to read!”

Gailert kicked him again. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll have Saimon suck it out of you.”

The boy only sobbed louder, his voice like a wail.

Kicking out once more, Gailert stomped back up the stairs. “You leave me no choice.”

It was twelve paces to the porter’s room. Gailert had to wake him. Saimon was irritable when he at last understood the charge he laying on him. When they both returned to the cellar the boy was no longer at the foot of the stairs. Calling out, they searched the room and found him ducked behind the furnace, as if he could claw through the rock to get out. On orders, Saimon lifted the boy up on to his feet then set his hand against the child’s face, pressing him against the wall so he could not slither away. The boy struggled at first, but soon hung limp as Saimon drew out his thoughts. Dropping the child where he was, the porter turned and sighed with a shrug.

“He was not lying to you, sir. The boy read everything in front of his eyes as practice. He thought you wanted him to learn to read everything.” Saimon then walked up the steps to go return back to bed.

Gailert trembled, feeling a chill of dread despite his porter’s words. Turning, he stared at the child who lay unconscious on the ground. With a stomp he followed his porter back up the stairs and to the servants’ quarters. “But what is his intent? Why read military maps?”

Passing the grandfather clock that chimed at the half hour, closing his eyes with a yawn, his porter shrugged. “It was in front of him, sir. No reason behind it.”

“Not even a plan for an escape?” Gailert asked, looking back towards the cellar. “To see insurgents?”

The porter shook his head, opening his door. “Sorry. No. He was just reading to read. The kid doesn’t know what he should and should not read. Maybe you ought to teach him if you really want him to read at all. No disrespect.”

Gailert nodded. He turned slowly, scuffing his slipper feet as he walked back to his room. Perhaps General Lemmun’s warning had at last sunk in. It was dangerous for a slave to know how to read, especially if he was someone that had known rebels, and even more if he knew what the words meant. His porter was right also. He had better teach his boy what was allowable to read and what was not since he could no longer undo the child’s literary education.

*

Kemdin ached all over when he woke that frigid autumn morning at the base of the stairs. He had scrapes on his arms and legs and one on his face, all which stung, as well as a number of bruises all over. The fact that he had not broken anything was moot consolation to the terror he felt waiting to meet the general again.

The general’s manservant fetched him before breakfast and practically carried him into the frosty yard for his morning chores as if the night incident had not happened. Only one thing did the blue-eye say that reminded him that incident occurred, was this: “Keep your reading eyes on the ground from now on, unless you are called to read.”

Kemdin had been wracking his brains all morning trying to figure out what he had read that had offended the general. As unpredictable as the weather, that demon’s moods were often just as terrible. One moment General Winstrong spoke of life as a banquet of knowledge that he wanted to share with others around him, the next he was savagely defending his position of authority as if every living soul were seeking his demise. It was like the demon was playing a twisted game.

It also reminded Kemdin of the time when his father lectured him about waiting for the molten metal to be entirely liquid before pouring it into the molds. His father’s words were clear: check your metal before removing it from the fire. It was like saying check the water before jumping into the lake. Check the temperature of the arrowheads before breaking them from the molds. Do not jump ahead on assumptions. Know before you do. But for Kemdin to think that his master the general jumped to conclusions and acted before he thought them through would earn him a beating. His master never admitted to anything less than perfection, even in his overeager idealism.

That was something Kemdin did not need to read. He heard it everywhere, if not especially at the military post when he sat and waited for errands to do. The soldiers whispered about how the general was famous for dreaming up schemes that were somewhat half-cocked. His talk of civilizing the humans was joked about as incredibly idealistic. His fetish for automobile travel outside of the cities was also a point the soldiers jabbed at, and each time they did they glanced at Kemdin to see if he would ever repeat what they had said. A number of them had even threatened him to keep silent.

But of course Kemdin wouldn’t dare say a word to the general about in-office gossip. He was more likely to be punished for it than they would. Instead Kemdin kept it inside and mulled over what he had to do to keep from angering the demon that kept him captive.

After chores when he gnawed on his bread and meat, pulling his arms close to his body to keep warm, Kemdin thought over all the things he might have read that made the general angry with him. General Winstrong had shouted at him for reading something he should have known he oughtn’t, but reading was the very thing the general had him to do. In fact the general had told him to practice reading everything in front of him. It made no sense. Actually, the way the general looked at him made no sense. The demon’s scanning dark eyes often peered at Kemdin’s face as if he believed the boy could read everything in his mind from a look into his eyes. Perhaps it was the general’s way of trying to absorb thoughts without the demon touch Kemdin now knew the general didn’t have. In fact, the general was practically human. And for some reason, that was more terrifying.

“Boy.”

Kemdin looked up from his seat in the kitchen. The maid walked out, nodding to the general who stood in the doorway. Kemdin swallowed his last piece, watching the

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 21.02.2018
ISBN: 978-3-7554-7868-3

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