Chapter 6 Snow Crowned Kings #2
The chatter quieted as the sound of slow hooves approached, rejoining the rest. Baker closed her eyes as the new horseman stopped right next to her.
She could feel his eyes and so she kept her head turned away from him, her face buried under her hair.
Once again, she was nothing but a rock, for the silence that the rider on the white horse carried with him was not like hers.
This was not a silence that hid. It was a silence that consumed words.
She remained frozen as she was peeled from the horse, wanting to disappear all over again. Heart still racing, she was put in a nearby wagon with other crowded bodies, clutching her head in her hands as she listened to the noises outside.
Baker rolled through Valentine’s stories, trying to remember what he’d ever said about the Strike, trying to remember everything the ROSE had told her about them. The wagon jerked on, and though she could not remember Valentine’s stories, she did remember Von’s.
???
No one spoke, and people barely looked at each other, almost as if the Strike were in there with them. The rest of their journey continued with the loose obscurity of a dream that she could only drift through without any feelings but a pervasive and quiet shock.
She would later overhear that in the events of the resistance between the ROSE and the Strike, she’d witnessed a turning point, the collapse of one of the ROSE’s three largest bases and the ruin of the King’s Mountains.
The moments beyond that point were a blur.
When they were allowed to leave the wagon for the first time, Baker was relieved that the white horse was nowhere in site.
With each stop to walk or take breaks after long hours, there were fewer Strike outside.
When they returned back into the wagon to continue the journey on the second stop, she realized that there were fewer humans too.
This theme became so prevalent that Baker was eager for them to reach their destination, knowing they’d arrived when the wagon passed through a series of gates and tottered across a cobblestone street.
Despite the passing of night and day, Baker still didn’t know how long she had been in that wagon.
Time became irrelevant. She felt like a shell, watching her own body sit and act with little attachment to it.
The small flame she’d imagined inside herself only a few nights ago, was now a dampened coal, struggling for a semblance of warmth. Her world existed in pieces.
She saw people wandering outside in seeming normalcy. Their destination wasn’t frightening, not like she’d imagined. She soaked in the surrounding world when the wagon opened a final time and they were unloaded in front of a stone structure that rose on a hill in the middle of a walled city.
It was like a large rock with carved balconies and doors, jutting up ten floors and leaning back against the sky like an elongated neck. She heard one person whisper that it was the Bleeding Grin.
Baker had learned the name from Valentine’s musings. It was the home of the Strike, and the peak of their capital. She’d often imagined it, but it was never supposed to be a real place. She hoped somehow none of it was.
They were guided up the stone courtyard path to the Bleeding Grin after being unloaded from the wagon by other people in uniform, brown garb. The path rose slightly on a hill with a view of the wide, thin gate that kept the rest of the city at a distance. Baker took a fleeting glance at the city.
Grand, dark steeples marked the outskirts, and within their bounds were beautiful cobblestone streets and neatly built houses with rows of flower beds between them.
It was like a fantasy, adding to Baker’s sense of distance from reality.
The streets and houses were beautiful, closed in together by ornate, gray walls with a single gate to the north.
She continued to stare at it as she was lined up with the others in front of what seemed to be a smaller, back entrance to a basement of the Grin.
Older slaves came and selected people from the short line.
Baker was picked over. Younger and smaller than the rest, she stared off as minutes turned into hours.
There were five of them left when Baker saw that crowds had gathered in the streets, coming up to the gates around the Grin. She turned to watch them and soon forgot she was waiting to be picked up at all.
The gathering crowd simply waited at first, as if an event might soon start at the gates. As the crowd grew, people became more restless and Baker was transfixed with them as the noon sun inched high into the sky.
Their behavior changed as they crowded the thin fence, wailing with glossy eyes and blubbering lips. All well-dressed and healthy, they pushed their arms through the bars of the gate, reaching and clawing with wordless grunts.
So confused by the scene, Baker barely noticed the Strike walking up to the gates with a black cat close behind her.
Dressed in red from head to toe, the beautiful Strike stopped a few steps back from them, playing with the fingers of her black gloves.
“Peter won’t be happy if they’re like this for much longer,” the Strike said, perhaps to the cat. “I guess this is my job today.” She lifted a hand and waved it forward, her long golden hair flickering in the light.
Tables rose up out of the earth, food materializing on them. The people broke out into a frenzy, digging into the cooked birds, bowls of fruit, breads, and vegetables.
Baker couldn’t hide her horror at the chaotic way that the humans tore at the food like animals. The Strike returned her glove to her hand and walked off but the cat stayed behind, it’s back to the gate now, despite the hands that seemed to be reaching for it on the other side.
Baker noticed it watching her and she stared back.
It had the most peculiar purple rings in its eyes and the longer she looked, the more deeply some hidden knowledge seemed to stir inside her.
She was afraid and angry all at once, and without reason, everything her numbness protected her from began to boil to the surface.
These eyes grounded her in feelings and sensations she didn’t want to feel.
A powerful, intrusive thought forced its way into her brain as if the cat put it there. It was a memory she hadn’t thought of in years, a squirrel caught in a hawk’s talons, an experience bruised into her brain during one of her adventures in the Fort Kit fields.
She’d seen the squirrel struggle against the branch of the tree with weak, helpless sounds. The hawk continued to tear. Nature had been so cruel in that moment. Baker had forgotten it, but now she felt like she was reliving it, like she was the squirrel.
A hand grabbed her, wrestling her back as she jolted violently in surprise.
Baker stumbled as she was pushed inside the slaves quarters, the door slamming behind her and inviting the attention of other slaves sitting at small tables in what appeared to be a dining hall.
“Who left her out there alone?” a woman exclaimed, everyone’s attention focused on her. “Who?” she demanded. “Who took the others and left her out there alone?”
Baker hardly realized the other five had been taken.
“Perilous and Amiel were out there feeding the people,” the woman continued to explain, Baker staring at her in shock of her fury and trying to recover from the feelings of the squirrel.
This new woman’s hair had been wrapped up in a brown cap, a few golden curls hanging loose at her temples. Her blue eyes were furious and beautiful like sharp crystals.
Everyone stared.
“Amiel was watching her,” the woman continued, and then grabbing Baker by the arm, she started to lead her off. “You should all be ashamed!”
The woman carried her off, brown dress kicking back behind her as she pulled Baker into a room and shut the door. Another slave was sitting there on a bed, fingers flipping through the pages of a book, messy black hair tied into a bun.
As they entered, the woman examined them skeptically. “What’s gotten you in such a fuss, Marnie?” she said.
“They left this little one out there alone with Amiel,” Marnie said, stroking Baker’s head tenderly.
The woman on the bed grimaced. “And you saved her? There could be a price to pay for a twig like that if Amiel really wanted her. She doesn’t look like she’d last here anyway.”
“Jolie,” Marnie snapped, sitting Baker back on the bed.
Marnie faced her again, a warmth in her eyes.
“Don’t you listen to any of them,” she said, checking Baker’s arms and legs before shuffling under the bed.
“These clothes are going to be a bit big, but you’ll grow into them,” she said, pulling out some folded brown clothes and laying them in Baker’s lap.
Baker inspected Marnie’s face, glowing with a sense of life that stirred something in the closed core of her stomach.
Without prompting, Marnie explained about life as a slave as she wiped Baker’s face.
Her voice was soft and gentle, almost melodic.
Baker could barely understand the words through the fog in her brain, but the gentle voice kept stirring her.
“Life isn’t bad here if you know what to do.
Don’t look the Strike in the eyes. They can see your thoughts and feelings faster than you know how to recognize them.
You never go higher than three floors in this place.
You do everything I ask you to do. If approached by a Strike directly, listen to everything that they say and do what you’re told.
Some things might be strange. Don’t question it.
If it’s frightening or hurtful, just know that it’s temporary.
Don’t discuss it outside of this room. You understand? ”
Baker could only stare.
“You picked a great one,” Jolie commented in the silence, and Marnie whipped back and scolded her before returning her attention to Baker.