Westhaven by Rowan Erlking (ebook audio reader .txt) 📖

but this was a long distance, and remembering the name of the road and then the sign of the shop was harder than his usual trips. For starters, the walk took much longer, especially in bare feet on patches of ice and frost.

Heading up the hill, Kemdin noticed other slaves walking about on errands through the streets. Most of them wore the common clothes of the people though they were more threadbare than a freeman. He could tell the difference from a free human peasant to a slave easily. Almost all slaves had some sort of chain or leather strap around their ankles. A freeman also walked more erect, lifting his chin as a reminder to the slaves that he was not one of them. Other than that, there was little difference. Only the wealthy humans stood out from them, but their heads were looking around more carefully in case a Sky Child thought they were acting too strong minded.

Among the Sky Children who trotted around in fancy leather boots, elaborately embroidered and sewn coats and gowns, carrying alligator skin handbags with brass clasps, brass watches on silver chains, and dangling eyepieces stuffed in pockets were human merchants and peddlers selling fruit, bread and meat alongside linen, silks, and tatted lace. Necklaces with charms for the demon-wary, glass bottles and jars with flowery and pungent aromas for the foppish, and dangling crystals from feather fans for the fashionable. These alleys were packed with humans and Sky Children alike in the middle of commerce. The more respectable shops ran along the roads.

Beyond the alleys on the lower part of the hill were the human’s homes. They were hovels in comparison to the mansions of the Sky Children higher on the hill. But walking through those alleys and looking at their sliding doors and the demon wards hanging as wind chimes was like stepping back into his village. Kemdin slowed his pace to look at the residents. Many of them were children his age wearing their autumn coats and shoes. Some of them stared at him, pulling back and whispering with wonder at what he had done to end up a slave. But none talked to him. They knew a powerful Sky Child was his master.

And it was just as well. Kemdin had to quicken his pace and hurry on anyway. Despite having a similarity to his home village, these alleys smelled of decay and refuse. Under his bare feet the ground was damp and slimy where the frost had not covered it. Rats ran under the planking with stray cats scurrying after them for food through tossed away pieces of paper and rotted vegetable peels. There was none of the freshness of the lake wind or the clean wood the women in the village were constantly scrubbing. No pleasant smells of fish cooking or bread cooling or the familiar odor of cinnamon and sugar. Not even the warm odor of iron smelting from the smithy shop.

Hurrying along as his skin prickled and burned from the cold, Kemdin eventually reached the end of the alley of human homes and entered the street where he recognized the pharmacy his master frequented. He crossed the street and climbed up the steps to the door, pushed it open and entered inside, holding out the note with a shaking hand to the pharmacist that stood behind the counter.

The blue-eye peered down at him and snorted at Kemdin’s somewhat blue face. “Where’s your master?”

Kemdin ducked his head, holding the paper higher without a word.

With another snort, the pharmacist took the paper and read it silently. He then lifted his eyes to Kemdin. “I see.”

Turning, the man walked through the rear door to a room somewhere in the shop, then after a minute walked out again carrying a willow switch. He slapped it in his palm peering over Kemdin first, and then grabbed a hold of Kemdin’s hair. Immediately wailing on the boy’s back, he struck hard and repeatedly until the switch broke, snapping at the top with fraying strips of bark. Of course by that time Kemdin was sobbing on the ground wondering what he had done wrong this time.

The apothecary dropped the switch on the floor next to him. “Pick that up.”

Aching, Kemdin still did as he was told, knowing disobedience would bring worse punishment. He hoped the apothecary wasn’t going to use it again.

“You are to take that back to your master and tell him these words, ‘spare the rod, spoil the child.’ Understand?”

The bitterness of the apothecary’s voice stung even as the lashes that bled across his back did. Kemdin nodded.

“Good. Now take him this too.” The apothecary shoved a small packaged into Kemdin’s hand. He then kicked the boy with the side of his foot towards the door. “Now get. He’s probably been waiting way too long for his medicine.”

Kemdin rushed down the steps of the shop and into the street, dragging his clanging chains down hill of the main road as fast as he could go. Though his ankles hurt, his feet hurt, his back hurt and his lugs hurt, he rushed on wondering as tears dribbled down what the letter had said. Was it to beat him on arrival? Or to beat him if he was late? Had he been late?

Worried that another beating would come, Kemdin scurried back towards the military post. And though his feet hurt, and though he tripped twice and skinned his knees on the cobblestone, he rushed to the doors of the military post and up the steps, keeping his eyes off the map that he had had at last figured made the general so angry at him for reading before. He hopped to the office door, rapping it with his knuckles.

“Enter.”

Kemdin took in a breath, wiped the sweat from his face and pulled the lever down. Shuffling into the warm room, he held up the willow switch along with the package.

“Do you have a message for me?” the general said in an icy voice.

Trembling, Kemdin closed his eyes. “The apothecary told me to say, spare the rod, spoil the child.”

“Turn around,” the general said, taking the switch and the package from Kemdin’s hands.

Weeping, Kemdin turned waiting for more blows. He heard the general rise from his seat. The general’s shoes made an echo in the room as he walked across the floor around his desk. The demon stopped just a foot away.

“Good,” the general said. “I see you are learning.”

He walked to Kemdin’s other side.

Hearing next to his ear, the general whispered, “If I catch you reading anything that you are not permitted to see, you will receive a much harsher beating. Now go out and sit on the porch. I will call for you when I want you.”

Kemdin practically jumped out. Scrambling to the door, he went straight through. He was out on the porch again, sitting straight down with his eyes to the ground and pulling his arms close to this body to retain what warmth he had left. There were too many things with words on them around him anyway. The ground was the only safe thing to look at.

Behind him he heard the general’s feet scrape on the floor and his door click closed.

*

The boy looked perfectly humbled. Almost.

But even as the child sat slumped on the step with bleeding scars that now crisscrossed his back, the child had a disturbing strength that said he once was an heir to a smithy. That made Gailert Winstrong rethink his theories about the barbaric humans being teachable. His cohorts had said before that to give a human technology was to hand that human a weapon. A savage was always a savage. Gailert had thought that teaching this boy to read would make him more useful, more civilized, but the boy’s eyes gravitated towards the maps, the letterheads, the signs above important buildings and the signatures on pages. It was too suspicious. Too dangerous.

The fact was, Gailert had to crush that spirit. And not just in the boy. The boy was a microcosm of the human condition of Westhaven. He was an example of their hostility and darkness. He had to make the boy forget he ever was anything but a servant to a general, just like he had to make the humans in the outlying regions forget the time when the Sky Children had not ruled.

The problem was the raiders he had thought they had eradicated with the burning of that fishing village on the peninsula had attacked yet another rail line. Or more likely there were other groups, other insurgents waiting in pockets of untamed land for opportunities to ruin all the work he and his comrades had fought for. Somewhere they were getting weapons. Somehow they continued to gather conscripts. Unfortunately, that meant that his job was not done.

Gailert had hoped to retire and pass on his legacy to some bright captain so he could rest like his friend General Lemmun, but it was not to be. Due to the reports he had received just that morning of trouble in the Semple Mountains, he knew that another surge of uprisings had started. The rail route towards Barnid Town had been ransacked. The actual rail had been torn up and the train, just like he had predicted, went off the tracks tipping into the plain in a wreck. People and merchandise were hurt.

“General.” The lieutenant knocked as he entered. “I have a telegram for you.”

“Hand it here,” Gailert said, reaching out to take it.

The lieutenant passed over the card. Reading it silently first, Gailert then pored over it again. Rising from his seat, he said, “Have you read it?”

The lieutenant shook his head. He knew well enough not to read confidential documents. “No, sir.”

“It says:

 

For General Winstrong Stop. Reassignment Orders Stop. Turn over Roan post to Captain Welsin Stop. Oversee Southwestern corner Stop. Eradicate insurgents Stop. Meet Captains of the district to coordinate operation Stop. Commence construction for paved automobile roads Stop. Establish guard posts for railroad along Semple, Kirting and Duglis Mountain valleys Stop. Discuss retirement after Southwest corner is set back in order Stop. Sky Lord Stop.

 

Gailert lifted his eyes from the card to see the lieutenant’s reaction. The man looked gratifyingly stunned.

“Apparently,” Gailert said, “retirement will have to wait. But at least I get to build my roads.”

The lieutenant nodded, still looking surprised.

“Call in Captain Welsin. Undoubtedly the captain will want to know of the new orders. Then inform my driver to pull the auto around front. I will need to return home to speak with my porter and arrange for my long absence.” He then sighed leaning on his desk. “I really had wanted to retire.”

“Well then, sir, it is good thing you have that slave to ease your burden,” the lieutenant said. He then saw the general’s warning look to not linger, and he clicked his heels with a bow. “I’ll get the captain.”

He departed.

Gailert tapped the telegram card against his palm. The Sky Lord himself was entrusting him to end this problem. He looked at the words again. Oversee the Southwestern corner? That area was mostly forest, mountains and desert. The desert he could ignore. No one lived there except demons. And for all he cared, the demons could have it. The forest was filled with demons of all kinds also, and the mountains were undoubtedly infested with insurgents. If he could not kill them, he would have to drive them south into Maldos territory where General Selvarstone was the overseer. Then they would be his problem.

Establish guard posts? Not a problem. But the construction of paved roads was exactly the good news he had been waiting for. For this he was willing to delay retirement. Westhaven would become civilized yet.

He turned and walked to the door, opened it, and stepped out. As the cold autumn wind hit his face, he looked around for his boy. He was still sitting on the step, hunched over and pushing the dirt around with his finger in his