28. RIEKA
28
RIEKA
132 days until Marian 1st
S ’vara and Farox were the last passengers to reboard the train from the Hunt. The circumstances as to their late boarding were on account of the five supply caches they dragged with them.
That night our little group learned that the she-wolf born from the seaport city of Igran, had a metal jaw. Later that week we’d learn it was from a boating accident when some rigging had snapped and ripped off her lower jaw, leaving the only mending an Organic could do was regrow the skin and muscle over the steel the bone had been replaced with. In the Hunt, a Hunter had attempted to shoot S’vara in the face with a gun, a word and weapon new to me. The bullets, buckshot someone had called them, had destroyed all the skin on her chin.
She’d been mended in hours, but it had given new meaning to the term “Steel Jaw.” According to Farox, she had used it to rip off the Hunter’s hand. S’vara had spent the rest of the night poking her new skin to ensure sensation had returned to every part.
As it turned out Rhydian had been right about the Kensillans. Over the next three weeks, my bunkmates were drawn for the Hunt. Rules dictated that the train wouldn’t receive their ration shipment unless they survived a Hunt. The drawings were random. No one knew why S’vara and Farox’s Hunt was drawn two days after my own, but the Hunt that chose Hentirion and Emil was not till six days later. They were gone for two days. And Tira had been drawn alone the very night they had returned. No one could fathom why the Hunts were being drawn so close together, but I had my suspicions it had something to do with me. And what I’d done to that slave camp.
The worry lines I’d begun to see on Lily’s face during dinner preparations gave me some indication as to the consequences of so many Hunts in such a short amount of time.
The train was running out of rations. The regular shipments courtesy of our wardens were still arriving. The train would slow down every five days, though it wouldn’t stop. The passengers would wait in The Fight Hall for the glass panel in the roof to open. A single drone, a Kensillan piece of technology that looked like a metal cigar with wings would then hover over the hole and deliver a heavy supply of large crates.
Wade and a few other Pneumatics were required to unstack the large crates as they would be delivered stacked on top of one another. Then Lily and a couple of members of the council would catalogue the items before they were allotted to the carriages. These supplies were the bare minimum. There was not enough to accommodate the number of passengers aboard. The supply drops never included rations for the hundreds of collarless passengers. They did not account for the two hundred children onboard.
Two weeks on kitchen duty with Lily, and even she couldn’t withhold the fact the stock in the storage rooms was dwindling fast.
The train’s mourning celebration upon Tira and her Hunt’s return was small. It had only been a day since Hentirion and Emil had returned, and even then, the extra supplies had been low. And as much as I hated him, I could see the worry begin to show in Rhydian. It showed in the lines of his face as he slept. It was the only time it showed.
Morale had significantly lowered amongst the passengers. Sex and alcohol had become a much more frequent pastime. The sight of Saska and Emil sleeping together had become such a normal occurrence that Hentirion had moved into Farox’s bunk.
When people weren’t in The Cantina dulling their fears with Tollen’s homebrew, they were seeking the entertainment of The Theatre , where passengers would not only tell stories, but they would perform exaggerated re-enactments of moments in their lives, much to the other passengers’ amusements.
Whilst it wasn’t like baking, since I didn’t have the control I really wanted, I had kitchen work to keep me occupied. The others had fighting. It was all Saska and Farox seemed to do aside from having sex, the Drake finding himself welcome in several bunks on the train. More than half their free time was spent sparring with the Runners who seemed to favour this past time as well.
They spent all their other time in hushed meetings with Rhydian, likely discussing the supply runs that seemed to come up short if The Kitchen inventory lists were to be believed.
And when the Runners weren’t doing that, they were volunteering for the Hunts that just kept being drawn, attempting to get as many passengers and their supplies back on the train. Killing as many Hunters as they could in the process.
They truly were invisible to the Eyes as Ghena had called the Kensillan government.
But I’d started to suspect there were other Runners, ones who didn’t live on the train. Whenever the train would slow for supply drops, there would be a new collarless passenger at their table at twelfth-hour meal, and one whose scent I didn’t even recognise in passing. They would be gone a few hours later.
I’d wanted to use his Condition #3 to get the answers. So for a while, I indulged in his curiosity and asked him the same questions he asked me.
What were our likes and dislikes? What were our favourite foods, our ages? He’d thought my being twenty-two was a stretch. I’d commented that I couldn’t help it if the gods blessed me with great skin.
I even had a few of my own.
“Why the red leather jacket?”
“It was my father’s.”
“Do you carry any weapons?
“Just the hairpin.”
“Your father’s too?”
“Mother’s. Alchemist steel. It never dulls”
“Who on the train knows you’re a Homeopath?”
“Grandfather, Lily, Jae and Sal.”
“How have you kept it a secret for 24 years?”
“I’m a marvellous actor.”
“Who is my buyer?”
He refused to answer that one. A refusal that garnered me one night in the tub. Though he hadn’t yet fulfilled that part of the condition. I’d proceeded to ask it four more times that week causing him to amend the Condition.
a question cannot be asked more than once if refused.
So, I’d resorted to asking around my initial question. What was the buyer’s name? Did they have an accent? What language did you converse in? What did the buyer look like? Where can I find them?
I’d garnered a week’s worth of tub time and finally came to the annoying conclusion that Rhydian had no intention of telling me anything about the individual who wanted to purchase me. I was no better than a pair of shoes or a new coat.
And my task of making the man fall in love with me was becoming more difficult. Rhydian had started leaving the train for days at a time, using the Hunts as an excuse to sneak off the train, cutting the time I could spend with him in half. When I’d asked him to tell me where he was going, using Condition #3 as the excuse, he’d told me it was Runner business and therefore none of mine.
I’d tried to get the answer out of his Runners whenever we’d cross paths, but they’d leave faster than I could open my mouth. In Rhydian’s absences, they’d been ordered to avoid me. Likely because they couldn’t keep their thoughts from me.
The twins, Lex and Lera quoted Old Prean riddles whenever they were around me. Lily would recite recipes and Jae, poetry. Mal, the Bear-Blessed Brute would sing romantic ballads whilst Amida, the purple-haired Sylph with the dragonfly wings, chose to sing drinking songs in her head whenever she was around me.
Eleen was the only one who seemed even comfortable in my presence without Rhydian. And her thoughts never even lingered on me long enough to garner my attention. She thought of two topics in my presence, my ability to bespell and how that was related to my being a T'eiryash, and the changing state of my hair—over the last few weeks my roots had started returning to their natural black.
My only recourse had been morning training sessions. The Runners’ mistake had been to allow passengers to pick their sparring partners. I had chosen one of Rhydian’s Runners four out of five times.
The sessions quickly turned to frustration on my part. They were taking it easy on me. And what I thought was going to be my way of compelling the answers I needed out of them, turned into a useless quest for respect. Which had surprised me.
My patience with the Runners refusing to fight me at full strength lasted four days.
The final straw was when Saska and Emil had been drawn for their second Hunt. The lovers managed to return alive the next night, but Emil’s leg had been sliced up by a Hunter’s blade so badly that he had to spend two days in MedCom as Sal slowly mended the muscles.
I’d finally cornered Jordry, the tall curly-haired brunette that smelled like a coin purse, in The Gardens in front of the golden statue one night after dinner. He’d been put in charge in Rhydian’s absence and was the most likely person to be honest with me. So I asked him. Why were the Runners refusing to fight me like an equal? Not the question I had originally intended to ask, but the one that simply escaped me.
“Because you’re the boss’s wife.”
I’d paced the space before the bench when he sat beside the golden woman, contemplating how to respond to that ridiculous excuse and found myself asking what exactly Rhydian’s orders were, and not to lie because I would know.
“Help you with anything you need,” he’d said. “But to not talk about Runner business.”
“Then help me train. How am I supposed to stay alive out there, and protect my friends if I can’t fight other Brutes, other Blessed at full strength? I can’t believe Rhydian wouldn’t want that?” That last statement was my desperate attempt to use the lie. To appeal to Jordry’s years of friendship with Rhydian. It had worked.
The following day the Runners threw everything at me. I went to bed that night bruised but vindicated.
The morning Rhydian returned from his third trip off the train, I was in the middle of a sparring session with the person I hated nearly as much as him. Wade—regardless of my reasons for detesting him—was a good teacher.
He never threw a punch he did not intend to make connect. He always noticed why a move I pulled failed, correcting me if he knew how, and when something I did in the ring was unfamiliar to the other passengers, he would have me demonstrate it to them. My animosity towards him was evident to everyone, but neither of us let it get in the way of the task at hand.
My discovery of his relationship with Sal wasn’t as groundbreaking as I’d initially thought it to be. All my bunkmates had figured that part out before I had. I’d been so self-involved in my thoughts during those first days onboard, never leaving the sleeper carriage, that they had gathered what I hadn’t. But the other piece of information I’d garnered, that Bennic may have been a Charmer, that was not something any of them were aware of.
Regardless of my own experiences, Charmers were usually known to have quite positive influences on the communities they lived in. Tomas was a Charmer, and I had not experienced one negative emotion directed at the Train Justice. It made me wonder how those first days might have been different had Bennic lived.
Jordry grunted from his side of the mat. Saska stared down at his hunched frame with a smirk, shrugging his shoulder as if to say “What?” when I looked over at him.
My instincts had me dodging Wade’s fist. He had used the distraction to try to get in a hit. I’d gotten better in the last few days. Even without the use of his blessing, his punches hurt like a bitch. The first strike he’d ever connected with my face knocked me clean out for several minutes. Today he finally missed.
We circled one another. He was more than twice my size, and a good foot taller than Rhydian. And his shoulders were wrought in thick solid muscle, likely a trait inherited from his Bear-Blessed father. At least according to what I’d heard.
He used his physicality well. I attempted to attack him but ended up being lifted and thrown against the nearby pillar, only just avoiding S’vara and Lex.
It would no doubt leave a bruise. I moaned at the discomfort I felt. It had the desired effect on the man.
Feeling sympathetic, Wade crossed the short distance to reach me, offering me his hand to rise. I grasped it, then used the momentum of his pull to spring onto his back. Wrapping myself around him, I pinned an arm between my legs and secured his head in a headlock, then I swung back with all my weight, forcing us to the ground. It was the only way I knew I could contain him. Low to the ground.
Wade was strong, but I knew some of my skills surpassed his. This was one of them.
I locked him into place and finally asked the question. “Why did you kill Bennic?”
The redhead paused in his struggle, as though caught off guard. Had he thought I’d just forgotten about it? Had he expected I’d just let the death of an innocent go?
“Who?” His hand attempted to pry my arm from around his neck, his thick fingers no doubt leaving bruises where they pressed into my skin. I tightened my grip. “Bennic. The man you killed the day I arrived. You used your blessing to crush his chest. Why?”
Wade didn’t answer. Instead, he used what little manoeuvrability he could to twist on the floor. It didn’t help him. I squeezed my legs tighter ensuring his arm was completely immobile. He began to struggle, the tinge of his already ruddy complexion turning purple.
“Why?” I growled out, shaking his oversized body to demand a response. The other pairs had started to cease their sparring, their fear at my behaviour buzzing in the air like flies on a hot day. I saw Lex beside S’vara in my periphery take a step forward only for her to hold him back. The words “It’s between them” reached my ears in her blunt tone. The Runners looked ready to intervene, but it didn’t matter. I could smell it on him. Wade had no intention of telling me anything. I’d gathered enough information in the last few weeks about Runners to know that they never took collars unless they were from the dead in the Hunts. And the council had already dealt him their punishment.
Wade had broken the “Non-Combatant Covenant,” the oath the collarless swear to if they choose to become Runners.
A Runner shall take no life unless in the protection of another.
A Runner shall claim no collar unless to retrieve one from the dead .
The council had sentenced him to one month off the train. With any luck, he would not be back.
When I felt his heartbeat slow enough, I released him. He fell unconscious onto my lap. I wriggled out from under him as his friends moved towards us, hesitating when I stood. “Don’t worry. I didn’t kill him.”
Malden, the Bear-Blessed Runner from among Rhydian’s circle, and the one who often ran the training sessions shouted at me as I adjusted my gloves and turned to leave the mat. “Training isn’t over for today!”
“It is for me.” Unfortunately, my rather dramatic exit was commandeered by the other man who held that burning pit in my chest. Rhydian, beard longer than when I’d last seen him, lounged against the frame of the carriage door, that ridiculously chiselled face amused at my expense as I stumbled in surprise. I tried to bush it off. “What, never seen a woman take down a man twice her size before?”
I brushed past him, taking note of the pack on his back. He’d only just returned? I hadn’t even noticed the train slow down.
“I have.” He meandered up beside me as we crossed through the passage into The Cantina . “Just never one who did it with such flare.”
As we entered the passageway to The Gardens, Rhydian said, “Still trying to figure out why he killed your bunkmate?” I shifted to let a group of passengers pass by and found him staring at me. “No. Not at all.” I didn’t even attempt to hide the lie.
He kept pace with me through the carriage until a large crowd of passengers coming from the seventh-hour meal pushed through the passageway forcing us both against the wall. My body was pressed into his, the metal of his belt buckle cold against the bare skin of my stomach, forcing me to stifle a small gasp at the sudden sensation. With my arms braced against his chest, having nowhere else to move, I could feel his heart beating against the palms of my hands. It was oddly welcoming.
Sometimes at night, the ones where I did not dream, I’d find myself waking up with my head against his chest, the sound comforting. It had startled me at first, that I could find comfort in the man I’d vowed to destroy. But it had forced me to acknowledge something.
The nights he was in my bed, I didn’t dream. I slept. And the nights he was gone, I didn’t sleep. Because I didn’t want to dream. So when we did share a bed, I’d leave my head there against his chest, absorbing his scent, listening to his heartbeat, and I would forgive myself that one thing. I would tell myself that it was good if he found me asleep against him in such a way. Proximity spawned intimacy.
I slid my hand up his chest and began touching the unkempt curls of his beard.
He surveyed my figure, his eyes trailing the toned muscles of my arms, the spot where his thumb was softly pressing into my forearm felt raw under his touch. “You look good , ” his inner voice declared.
Whether he knew I had heard him or not, I could not tell. He hadn’t been gone so long that he could have forgotten how my blessing worked.
I pushed off him when the passage cleared and headed through the next series of carriages until we reached the council Chambers, the usual influx of passengers milling about in the foyer waiting for the class to start. “Have you ever thought that the reason he insists on keeping it a secret is because it isn’t his secret to tell?”
The voice in my head that found sense in his words was quickly suppressed as we headed up the stairwell to the second-floor viewing alcoves. I was not at all ashamed to use him to secure myself a prime spot. He let me lead him by the hand right up the stairs and over to the balcony where the passengers made space just for us to see the class taking place in the chambers below.
Hentirion had been a constant presence during classes for the littles. Due to his vocation as a scholar, he was encouraged by the other passengers to educate the children about the world beyond the train. In particular the history of the world.
I leaned on the rail, watching him conduct his class from the same spot I’d witnessed the council announce Wade’s punishment. Today was his second official class since he’d spent the last two weeks sitting in on the other classes. He’d used that time to memorise the children’s names and had traded some of his supplies to get paper to create what he called Lesson Plans.
Yesterday he’d taught the children about The God Fall. But soon realised that the passengers, let alone the children knew very little as to the origin of themselves.
Rhydian leaned on the rail beside me. “What is he teaching them?”
I’d seen the notes on the scholar’s bunk. “The Origin of Taints.” Rhydian’s attention appeared peaked.
Hentirion’s low voice carried right to us on the third landing where dozens of passengers had heard about his classes and had come purposefully to watch. I spied S’vara and Saska on the second-floor landing opposite, and Emil on the ground floor, sitting on the hardwood by a pillar, his blessing causing the pieces of copper wiring to twist in his hands without him even looking.
Rhydian’s grandfather Kosha, someone I have barely interacted with, intentionally on my part for the last three weeks, was sitting down there as well. He’d positioned himself on a chair at the back of the class with a clear line of sight of Hentirion. He caught my eye and nodded to me when he saw who I was with.
Hentirion stood at the front of the Council Chambers on the ground level. Situated before him, seated at the large horseshoe table where the council normally held their meetings, were at least fifty children, the youngest probably no older than eight. After addressing the carriage, he stepped forward and touched the tech board at the front of the class causing a large hand-drawn image to appear.
An oval divided horizontally into three.
I knew that image. There wasn’t a great house in Deos that didn’t have it weaved into a tapestry in their halls.
“Does anyone know what this image depicts?” Hentirion looked around at the group of children, his tone softer around them than our group.
“An egg!” a little boy with fox ears shouted.
“It’s not an egg silly. That’s the world,” little Ghena spoke up, her eyes narrowing at the little boy as though she found his comment the stupidest thing in the world. She then smiled up at Hentirion. “Right Teacher?” They’d begun using that title as a sign of respect for him.
“That is correct” He leaned forward slightly, a small smile on his face as he looked at the little boy. “I think it looks like an egg too.”
As the little boy giggled at the comment, Hentirion straightened and walked back over to the tech board.
“This, according to centuries of academic study, depicts the world as the gods built it.” He indicated to each section of the diagram. “The upper region is the God Sphere. Some call it the Heavens. The centre is Terra where our continent of Idica resides, and the lower region is the Dark Sphere.”
A shiver ran through the carriage at his last words. The image depicted the lower half of the world, the one that existed beneath ours was a series of tunnels and channels all leading to Veliah’s Necropolis. A cavernous city made of black stone, with no light but that which the souls in service to her collected in pails from the river of The Deep Waters.
A little girl shakily raised her hand, one of the long rabbit ears atop her head drooping at her hesitance. “Yes, Nella?” Hentirion said.
“How did the gods make the world?”
Hentirion scanned the chamber, looking at the children. “Does anyone want to answer that?” When none of the children did, he offered it up to the passengers. A man on the second landing, who sounded an awful lot like Farox shouted out, “Why don’t you tell us the story?”
“Very well.” Hentirion tried to hide the smile on his face.
I realised then that it had been intentional. He’d wanted to make a show out of the lesson. To spark interest in the topic. He began to pace the chamber, every eye fixated on him. He suddenly paused and tapped the tech board.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that Hentirion knew exactly how the Prean piece of technology worked. Haltians were Preans after all.
The drawing which had been on the glass a moment ago suddenly moved into the middle of the chambers, as though an illusion of light. It floated in the air above the children, drawing cries of awe from their little voices. As Hentirion continued, the image morphed into the very things he spoke of.
I knew the story all too well. The scriptures within Celestisum, as dictated and created by the Servitors who were the priests of the religion of Deos made sure every child in the country had the tale memorised by the age of nine.
How the gods birthed themselves from the Elemental Waters and how they built the God Sphere for themselves. They created humanity and gifted us Terra, and how one of the gods, Veliah, caused the Great Division. Seeing fault in humanity she cursed them. Gave them fear and anger, greed and violence, and pride corrupting the world. The gods’ only recourse was to create a prison to contain her.
They split the world in half and sealed her in the below. The Dark Sphere. Unable to undo what Veliah had wrought upon the world, the gods sought a way to curb her influence and so they chose certain humans to bestow gifts upon which could be used for great deeds.
In Deos, the descendants of those humans were known as The Blessed. But over time, the gods disputed how best to use The Blessed and they fragmented, creating the various Pantheons of Idica. The Celestials in Deos, The Core in Kensilla, The Nine over Prea, The Primes of Pazgar and Oltise, before they granted themselves absolute power and renamed the nation The Gods Hold, were The Cardinals. And then after millennia under their guidance, The God Fall occurred. Each nation had a different story of why the gods chose to rule over us instead of abandoning us.
I was taught that The Blessed of the past were seen worthy of the gifts the Celestials bestowed upon them, but we as their descendants had to prove ourselves worthy of the Celestial’s favour. Those who succeeded were granted a place alongside their ancestors in the God Sphere, where their spirits lit up the night sky. Those of us who failed, who allowed Veliah’s curse to rule us, would serve her in death in her kingdom in the Dark Sphere. Whilst this was the belief of many in Idica, there were some who refused to let the gods dictate their lives.
Hentirion had just explained that last part when he asked if anyone knew which nation.
S’vara spoke up. “The Prean Union. We accept that Veliah will claim us upon our deaths but whilst we live, our lives are our own. The gods cannot dictate how we live them.”
The same little girl with the long ears, Nella, looked over to S’vara. “But aren’t you afraid you’ll meet one and anger them? The gods walk the earth because of The God Fall.”
Tira chose this moment to speak up. “All peoples of the Prean Union believe the gods only hold power if you grant it to them.”
A sentiment I wished I believed.
She had sat in the back of the class as she had done for the last week. We’d learned soon after our arrival that she was illiterate like most Terrestrials of the communes on the Enibon islands. Their educations were more practical than intellectual. Hentirion had been teaching her to read from whatever material we could find on the train. Her attendance in this class had less to do with reading and more to do with information gathering.
“Can anyone tell me what they know about the gods?” Hentirion tapped on the techboard once again causing it to display an image I had seen in a k long ago. It was a tapestry of a god. Physically no different to us except for one thing—their gold eyes. My body gave an involuntary shiver that had Rhydian glancing over to me. I ordered my body to still as the children started to chime in. “They can read your mind!”
“They have golden skin like a snake.”
“They cannot be killed!”
I caught Rhydian smiling down at the class in muted delight. I’d smiled in response and instantly wiped the expression from my face, angry my body had felt the need to betray me. More so that he found amusement in such a dangerous topic.
I tried counting the children to refocus and noticed that at least two hadn’t shown up today.
“They can curse you into a slug!”
Laugher filled the chamber, but it wasn’t entirely free of restraint. Several faces seemed to blanch at the little boy’s words. I knew what they feared.
But the gods couldn’t know everything, they couldn’t hear everything. I had to believe that or I wouldn’t still be alive.
Hentirion smiled brightly. His fatherly demeanour was so warm, it was hard to believe he was the same man who could ignite this entire room and leave nothing but cinders should he wish.
“Has anyone heard of the saying ’Always look a god in the eye’?” There were nods and voiced affirmations from around the chamber. “Can anyone tell me where they think that saying comes from?”
Kosha spoke up for the first time in at least half a dozen lessons I’d seen him sit in on. His voice was gravely, and slow, sounding more like one of my father's superiors every time we met. “The gods take it as an insult and will likely curse you than forgive you for the slight for not making eye contact with them.”
Hentirion remained impressed, nodding in approval to the councillor before redirecting the class to the board where he had a map of Idica appear. I wanted to correct the old men, but it would just draw questions I could never answer.
“Rhydian, we’re ready.” I spun around at the sound of Eleen’s voice. She was dressed in her fight gear, but I had not seen her at training, so the sight was odd, especially since she should be on her way to her shift in The Bathhouse right about now.
“Follow me , ” his inner voice said. When he realised I hadn’t moved, confused by his invitation he spoke again, the tone to his thoughts serious. “You’re getting what you want. You’re coming on a supply run.”