I also found this chapter particularly difficult to write. I always felt like after the high of Kalara's last parting that wrapping up the loose ends from that meltdown of the plot seemed too tedious and boring, but after forcing my way through that writer's block, I feel like this chapter ends on a high note!
And wow we're still in Gem! I thought our time here would be shorter than it has been, but I've happily unpacked more inspiration from its fascinating depths. All the research I did for the visual guide has given me so many ideas, some which I'm sure might show up later with another character I've been pondering a side story for...because having one draft constantly in flux is not enough, apparently! (Spoiler Alert: I'm thinking Kalara's surrogate father, Ahrun Vadras, has had his own interesting adventures in The South, considering his reputation as a traveling tinkerer and love of firewands. It'd be fun to explore the politics of the Houses of Gem, considering Kalara is not really party to all of their intrigue).
Anyways, I hope you all enjoy this break from the silence and the new chapter! I value any thoughts and feedback you have for me in comments, even if it's just to let me know you're enjoying my poor gal's meanderings in the mire of tragic backstory. Hopefully, the next chapter will not take so long to write now that we've kicked things off again!
RATING: G
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The quiet chaos of grief felt like it should have consumed her, that upon arriving at yet another home in the shade of a grander lava tube, Kalara should have cried for the loss of her friends and the loss of Djali. Instead, numbness set in as Farook rode with her to her new home. Life, as it happened, seemed to continue on, ignorant of the cares of a Scrap like her. Farook introduced Kalara to her new quarters in his shaded abode, a little room barely larger than a closet with a small bed, half of the space full of scrolls and boxes. He was an appraiser in the grand scheme of House Iblan, his humble holdings luxurious enough to be shaded from the sun and furnished with woven carpets, but not near as decadent as Kalara might have imagined for someone descended from the venerable goldsmiths of Iblan.
Iblan Farook cracked his back as he stretched from their trip in the sedan chair, the aging man more past his prime than he liked to let on. “Clean up the mess tomorrow and the space is yours.” He gestured lazily to the piles of parchment. “I wasn’t expecting to win a slave. Lucky girl!” He laughed and placed a hand on her shoulder, Kalara’s green eyes flicking up to take in his beard-lined face, searching there for some clue as to whether that touch meant good or ill. Apparent kindness, she had learned, did not protect you from being sent off to the next master. Every time a new master bought her contract was a gamble of Plentimon’s dice between kind and cruel. So far she had been rolling well, too well.
However, it was too early to tell Farook’s character and any such ponderings were pushed to the wayside by the list of menial tasks he piled on her. Tea and biscuits at dawn, honeyed dates half past morning bell, seasoned eggs and smoke meat at midday, cheese and fruit in the afternoons, raisin rice and goose for dinner, but only on Marsdays, wine by bedtime. Medicine from the apothecary on Mercury’s Days. She would keep the home and surrounds tidy, tend to any visitors, and never, ever interrupt him while he was in his study unless called for. It was apparent that Iblan Farook took great care to maintain his robust figure…and that he intended to leave her to her tasks unattended with enough money for his expansive grocery needs.
Spinel had trusted her with as much responsibility running for supplies and making deliveries to his workers, a task she had been perfectly suited for with her knack for delegation. If only he’d known what she had been up to before he foolishly gambled away her contract. She had cleverly skimmed change from her transactions, in addition to pinching off small excesses of perishable food she had accumulated in her own private cache.
A flinch of realization passed over her, Kalara suppressing the joy that bubbled up at the thought of running to the market to see if she could hear any word of Djali’s fate. Soon enough, Farook disappeared to his quarters and left Kalara to her own devices. She took off to the marketplace with barely a second thought under the guise of gathering groceries for the next day.
*
When she reached Spinel’s familiar stall in the market, spying Spinel with his nose buried in a ledger, Kalara stymied her excitement, keeping her distance. Asking too emphatically about Djali would seem suspicious. Instead, she watched Spinel for a time from afar, pulling her scarf tightly around her features to avoid drawing attention while she pretended to browse other stalls. It was eerie to see another performing Djali’s tasks. Spinel had a new head boy now, Chien, the next oldest under Djali who had just the other day been laughing and roughhousing with them in the Sahlak baths.
Once Spinel headed off to his daily tasks, Kalara discreetly made her way to the stall, waving Chien greeting.
“Ay Kalara! I didn’t expect to see you. They told us you were sold yesterday!”
Kalara waved him close, looking around as she bid him to talk low. She had gone a market too far from where she was supposed to be gathering groceries and thought it best to keep this inquiry quick and quiet.
“I have to be quick before Spinel sees me. Have you seen Djali? What’s happened to him?”
Chien took a deep breath, running his fingers through his hair in frustration. “I don’t know what happened…but he tried to escape. I always knew he was crazy, but this?” He shook his head emphatically. “Spinel was so upset at losing him. He was the one he was grooming to be the next foreman! But now? He’s been sold to the water bearers on the surface.”
The understanding of Chien’s words sunk in slowly. She always knew he had a future with Spinel. She was the one who didn’t, or so she had thought, and she’d made Djali throw all of that away for her foolish dream of escape. Kalara barely absorbed the words that followed.
“If he makes up for his crimes with the bearers, Spinel will remove a mark from his papers as a gesture for his good service up until now, but nobody survives long in the sun, not with the heat of Ascending Fire and the raids on the basin. He’ll be lucky to last a year. Damn crazy Djali!” Chien shook his head again, his eyes squeezed close to fight back tears.
“I have to go…” Kalara didn’t mean to be brusque, but it was all she could manage at hearing Djali’s fate. He had made it out of the dark, into the sun, into the light, but not to freedom, but an early grave. What could she do? There was nothing. She had nothing. No one. The hollowness threw her life into perspective like nothing else had before.
She turned her back on the ghost of her former life, realizing how happy it had been, even with all its flaws. The loss of Djali, the loss of the tiny world where he existed, marked a hole in her heart where she would bury those innocent days.
“The world will never be what you want of it in this life. Walk your path well and the next life will be kinder.”
Auntie Niyan’s words, the advice she had bestowed her upon her sale to Spinel on the first day she had met Djali, rang louder, if not truer.
*
Life as the slave of Farook of House Iblan was a dull affair. She found him to be a generally fastidious man about his work and a complete slob about his home. No wonder he’d needed her when, somehow, a single person created more dishes and laundry than the entirety of the Scraps combined, or so it felt like with only one slave to assume all duties. She somehow missed the bells of the mining barracks that rang in the hours of their day, her life instead meted out by mealtimes and medication.
Farook required a daily dose of Acia bark dissolved in milk of the poppy, for his extravagant diet combined with his age aggravated his gout and gallbladder to the point he was bedridden some days. Too much of the bark and his medicine would punish him cruelly with bowel movements, a side effect she wished strongly to avoid for the kind of laundry it produced that she would additionally be responsible for.
From Farook’s medicated ramblings, and snippets she’d gathered from eavesdropping on his guests, Kalara gathered his history. This plump recluse had once been a goldsmith of some renown within the Iblan, but once his health declined, he gave up such meticulous workings, instead putting his keen eye for the substance of gold to appraisal instead.
She’d heard mention of an estranged son as well, but only in reference to his extravagant spending of the family fortune after their estrangement and his mother’s passing. Every now and again, an apprentice would show up to beg for his knowledge, but soon enough, they would be turned away by Farook’s disposition. She’d nod often as he raged to no one in particular about his slow, useless students.
Despite being his only caretaker, there was no affection from Farook, only a kind of tolerance of her presence as one might a stray dog. She minded the house and returned to her quarters when her duties were complete. He was never cruel, but never affectionate, beyond granting her a certain amount of independence, as long as she did her errands well and never spoke unless spoken to.
The few times she did speak an innocent inquiry of something, she was met with a cheerful, but dismissive exclamation about how such matters were nothing but clutter for the mind of a slave. If indifferent tolerance meant she would be safe from the demonic fleshcrafters that frequented Sahlak’s baths and the potential cruelty of a new master, Kalara told herself she could be content.
Even still, that old itch crept in without her even knowing it. She oftentimes found herself taking the wrong way home from the market, tracing pathways through the bustling streets that would lead her closer to the surface city and what lay beyond. She started stealing change again, telling Farook there was none left after tipping the rikshaw driver that transported her on a daily basis, when in truth at least a fourth of the difference remained. She’d have him drop her a ways off so that she could tip less.
She also enjoyed a walk back along the quaint lava tube, its houses more finely hewn with carved exteriors than her previous Antie Niyan’s cramped home. Lanterns hung above each door. Not salt or paper like the lower quarters, but lanterns of filigree metal lit from within by large glowstones that traced patterns of lacy light on the walls. Glowstones embedded into the ground marked the streets as well, paths of glowing rock leading tidily to each doorstep. She could always find her way home by following the line, even if she purposefully took the wrong paths.
Kalara spent more and more time at the market, finding solace in its hustle and distraction in observing the myriad lives that connected to one another. It was her favorite game to watch them in the mornings and listen to the cacophony of market chatter for scraps of their stories. The delivery boy from the outer city was the illegitimate child of the baker, who, himself, had a secret romance happening with the purse seller. Where she couldn’t hear the full story, she’d sometimes make up her own. It was the only excitement she had outside of Farook’s monotonous daily life.
Whatever she was stealing for, she didn’t know. Old habits died hard. She had no one to lead her out of the city now, no friends to comfort her beyond the scant hours in the market she could steal away chatting with old acquaintances among the Scraps, who themselves had begun to grow up and be filtered away into other jobs. Once a Scrap got too big to venture into the crevices, they had served their purpose and were sold off to other masters. Even with the change she had been skimming, buying her own freedom was years off…if she could even negotiate her own sale with Farook. Not all masters were so agreeable to the notion and found ways to prolong debt or make an unruly slave disappear to a worse fate.
Do well and be a good little slave and she would be rewarded in the next life, or so the Dragon worshippers taught. It was the only promise of something better that she had, and so she worked diligently, tending Farook and his home as any good slave should. The next few years of her life spent in this purgatory of routine passed in a haze of the same festivals and market runs.
Every now and again, she’d hear word of a raid on the water lines that made her think of Djali. Had he survived after all? What was he doing at the same time she was tending Farook’s dirty undergarments or roaming the markets? After awhile, she stopped asking herself. It was better not to think about him anymore, each thought picking at the wound of her failure. The seasons turned and the memories began to fade. She was no longer a child who would be swayed by childish fancies like escaping to a better life.
*
It was a day like any other when she would find the cocoon of routine she’d wrapped herself in breached by an unexpected sight. The marketplace had come alive in magnificent splendor with red streamers hung across the glowstones dangling in their enclosed skies, the voices of criers raising from the streets. Kalara caught snippets of the occasion while she went about her daily grocery retrieval. A recent raid had been defeated in the olive fields by a contingent of famous mercenary soldiers - The Ashen Guard. Unlike the usual incursions, this one had apparently been much larger than any they had seen in the past 20 years. The city had been on edge about it for some time. She could feel it in the air and the way that people around her hurriedly bought up supplies for a siege and whispered amongst themselves the horrors that would befall anyone captured by barbarians or worse - Dune people.
But today, the threat was no more and citizens with baskets of flowers and ribbons lined the streets singing and cheering their victory. Kalara had heard whispers of these mercenaries, long-time soldiers of the glorious Kolar III who defended the territories of Gem, their gray cloaks marking them as The Ashen Guard. The story of how the Guard got their name was a well-loved tale among the citizens of Gem. Hundreds of years ago during the violent eruption of the Fire Mountains, the city found itself under siege by an insurmountable force of united tribes that threatened to lay the city to waste and steal its treasures for themselves.
The Despot sent his bravest soldiers ahead to die. Outmatched and outnumbered, they found a way to outsmart death. Inspired by the cannibal Dune tribes who despise the sun, the soldiers hid themselves in the sands and patiently waited for the enemy to arrive. Like ghosts clad in volcanic ash, they sprang upon their enemies and routed the invading forces, dealing a blow the barbarians would remember for generations. Of the many stories she heard about them, this one was her favorite. However, to hear about them was one thing, but to see them was entirely another. She couldn’t resist indulging the sight and worked her way through the crowd to get a better vantage.
They rode tall and proud on their white horses down the center of the market, the usually indifferent crowd making a cheering path for their heroes. While she could only make out the back of the commander’s figure and his mane of flowing black hair, she caught sight of the others garbed in their distinctive gray armor and gray cloaks that billowed behind them like streams of smoke. A golden gleam caught her eye, drawing it to the hammer of the exquisitely crafted firewands hung at the side or across the back of each man. No other soldiers were as famed for their mastery of these guns as the Ashen Guard. No others were even allowed to carry the weapons branded with Arbani's personal seal outside of those heroic few who had been gifted these prized possessions by Halon himself. Such was the honor and prestige of the Ashen Guard.
Somehow, she had never seen them in person, only hearing the stories, her life so far disconnected from the affairs of warfare that she thought she’d have this opportunity. She stared agape at these upright men and women who had risked their lives for the city. They came from all walks of life, even slaves like her, and yet even they won the favor of the Despot and the prize of a master craftsman. A strange thought crept into the back of her mind, that familiar itch for something else.
She thought of them riding through the dunes atop their adorned steeds, washed by the blazing sun. She thought of herself among them, the gray cloak cutting the wind behind her, her hands steady as she looked down the sight of the firewand and fired the compact ball of flame at her target as one might thread a needle. She thought how deftly she could defend the water lines and see his face again, assured that Djali was safe. She felt whole and powerful at the thought, glimpsing once again the light of a future she might make for herself.
But such was the glorious short-lived nature of daydreams. Soon enough, their billowing cloaks disappeared around the bend and the crowd began to meander back to their daily lives of distraction and monotony. Kalara found herself glowing and empty in such a short span of time that it left her numbed and hollow in a way she had tried to forget for so long until now. She walked without purpose, hoping she could find some remedy for this feeling, but settling for the small freedom of being able to wander where she would within the tunnels as long as she returned home for mealtimes.
She found herself in familiar Iblan tunnels again, the old market paths she had ran as a child. The fleeting happiness she had there drew a small smile, even if they made her sad at the same time.
The sound of a whistle caught her off-guard, nearly making her trip.
“Pssst!”
The noise came again, Kalara peering cautiously in the shadows and squinting her eyes to focus. She could barely make out a dark shape seemingly emerging from the wall in a lesser known crevice that had been marked as off-limits by the crews.
“Psssssst! Kallie…is that you?? I am truly blessed! Ha ha ha thank the gods!”
The familiar voice and the nickname shocked her into awareness and she quickly whipped out the personal glowstone she had been granted by her Master to light her path through the darker tunnels, the faint light illuminating the curly locks, now long and gathered in a ponytail and the familiar gleaming and mischievous eyes of a ghost. It had to be a ghost! A Hungry Ghost back for revenge when she was caught off guard in her musings! She sucked in a breath and stepped back, dropping her glowstone at the same time.
“You’re dead!” She pointed at him with a single shaking accusatory finger.
“Oh come on, Kallie. I’m stuck!” Djali wiggled again, groaning as he still found himself stuck by the pelvis in the crevice. “I’m not so small to fit in here anymore!”
Kalara fell back on her haunches and just stared at him, too flustered to allow the realization to settle. “But what are you doing here?” She eventually stammered out in confusion.
“Look, we can catch up later because if we stay here for much longer, we’ll be caught and I’ll most likely be really killed and then I really will come back and haunt you. Help!” He held out an arm, wiggling his fingers at her to hurry when she didn’t take his grasp immediately.
She took his hand, pulling him with all her might out of the crevice he was stuck in, which drew some cursing from Djali as the movement scraped some rather delicate areas in the process.
When he was done preening and setting his pants back in order, he waved her to follow him and she was back in time again, following him without a beat into the tunnels, back into the unknown possibilities once more.
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