Chapter 27 Kai
Kai
Ihad traveled the world, and yet it seemed I could not outrun death.
Not that I saw the need to tell any of the men who were my new companions about it; while Matteo was quite talkative, the others seemed a little secretive, not that I could blame them.
This land was still deciding how it felt about those with faerie gifts, and so those who chose to hide them would not face judgment from me.
I helped carry the bodies, grateful that there was not enough left of them to witness the horrible ways in which they had no doubt died. I did not say this, as I knew it would mark me a coward, but I had seen enough corpses before to have no wish to revisit the experience.
There were not enough remains left to properly bury, but Lord Fortune still insisted on us digging the three graves.
It was our duty, he said, and he bent his back to the same work as the rest of us, and for those two things I respected him.
Those who had lost kin were still in shock, in mourning, and were not fit for such work.
With the four of us men at work, even in near-total darkness since it was now fully night, it did not take long to complete the digging followed by the brief ceremonies these people apparently favored.
No incense burned here; no shrines were erected.
But the grief hung heavy in the air, as did the resolve for this small community to remember its dead.
We had barely finished returning the shovels to the town folk who had brought them to us when a light rapidly approached on the path, bobbing unevenly.
I only had time to wonder whether it was a faerie creature when the light arrived—a torch borne by Lucas.
I had gathered through conversation that his particular charm was related to speed, but knowing it and seeing it were different things entirely.
In mere moments, he had run up to where we stood, a torch in one hand.
His other arm was clasped around a child. One that was still living and breathing, even though she was covered in scratches and welts, with half her head roughly shorn, as though her blond hair had been pulled out in tufts and chunks.
It was the same fine blond hair that we had seen in the grove, where the body parts had been too jumbled to tell how many of which limb had belonged with which victim.
We had assumed three died, but perhaps it was only two.
I looked to Lord Fortune, who had frozen in place.
He covered his mouth with one hand, his eyes glistening with sudden unshed tears, a collection of gestures that struck me as rather more feminine, but given how the previous day had apparently gone, perhaps it was no surprise that he felt desperate for any outcome besides the one we had assumed.
Lucas stumbled to a stop, setting the child on her feet—or perhaps his feet? I realized I could not tell the child’s gender, though they were clearly at least ten years of age—and then they went careening into the arms of three of the adults who had accompanied us to the grave site.
There were tears, exclamations, and many embraces among the villagers. The innkeeper who had first solicited us arrived, and joined in before turning to thank us once more.
“Benoit and Aubert should arrive within the hour,” Lucas said, once we were no longer the focus of attention. “Aubert heard the child’s cries somewhere between here and where we had found the last corpses; the child must have been unconscious when we passed through that stretch of land.”
These were not my people, and I did not know them well enough to grieve or celebrate with them, but I knew what it was like to be abandoned and left for dead, and so it gladdened my heart to know that one victim, at least, had escaped the worst fate that could have befallen them, alone and injured, possibly one more body for the monster to consume once it located the wounded child.
We were welcomed back to the inn, supplied with warm water to bathe in and libations and food to pass the evening.
And indeed, it was well-past full dark when Benoit and Aubert arrived, though once Aubert held a brief conversation with Lord Fortune, he appeared energetic and ready to work through the night.
As I listened to Aubert’s conversations, and looked at the people lined up to speak to him, I began to have greater clarity as to what was happening here.
The healing arts were needed everywhere; that much was obvious.
But the people here were reminiscent of others I had seen while traveling with my ship: the hijra in the southernmost tip of the nearest continent to my home, the fa’afafine in the islands to the south…
everywhere we had traveled, there were those who cast off the customs and clothing of their born sex, and took on another, or none at all.
Indeed, in my own home islands, men dressed as women to put on the most revered of plays in our theatrical tradition. Men could freely love other men, and I gathered that women did as well, though they were more discreet about it, as befit their status.
What was most unnatural, then, was the intolerance towards such people that I had observed as we traveled the lands Matapa had conquered.
I had been traveling for most of my life, both as the ship’s linguist and as an apprentice merchant, and had encountered a number of forms of governance and trade.
My own experiences had told me that there was no master worth serving, and yet here I was, sworn to a lord I had just met, one surrounded by men with their own secrets, yet many of which seemed to revere their lord.
It was a conundrum, one which I would normally enjoy unraveling to amuse myself, but now, I was simply tired, and I did not know if I had made the right choice in coming here.
The next day dawned bright. We had each been given rooms of our own in the inn, and I luxuriated in a bed to myself, even if I still found the raised beds used in this part of the world strange.
As we readied ourselves to depart, I noticed Lord Fortune taking the innkeeper aside.
It was not hard to guess at what he was saying: a request to not reveal our identities, no doubt.
Still, I moved closer to overhear the rest, as the innkeeper beseeched Lord Fortune to promote their interests in the capital.
“Please, my lord, carry word of our loyalty to the capital, to the ears of King Aristide. He must know we are his dedicated subjects, and we will support him in the war against Matapa in any way he needs.”
Their tone of desperation made more sense now; the king here tolerated their differences, whereas the invading emperor did not.
Lord Fortune promised all that, and then gathered us to resume our journey.
Nobody in our company complained about how late the night had gone, between the searching and the digging and the extra work Aubert had taken on.
Having witnessed their dedication to their lord, as well as the impeccable way their lord conducted himself, some of my anxiety about this new situation eased.
I was still among strangers in a strange land, but it seemed I had the good fortune to fall in with those who comported themselves with honor and compassion.
Given what I had lived through, what I had suffered, what had brought me here in the first place…perhaps I could afford to be cautiously optimistic about the direction my life was now taking.
Perhaps.