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

to ear. “How pleasant to have bumped into you out here. I have a mind to drive you home, but you look like you are out for a stroll.”

“That I am,” Gailert said.

His boy stopped and peered at the mayor who winked at the child.

“That’s grand.” The mayor nodded. “Now to business. Will you be coming to the evening celebration for Emergence Day this weekend? I know you don’t care for social functions, but I must insist you come. We need a strong military representative at the celebration, and the captain says he has his hands full with the captives from that village.”

Gailert sighed, but nodded. “Yes. Captain Luwes has been very busy dispatching the insurgents they collected from around Wenden Village. It has been quite a bloody business.”

“Did they find that witch at all?” the mayor asked.

“No.” Gailert frowned at that. “Nor did we find that leader that was mouthy when we first arrived.”

“What about that woman?” The mayor looked on him more deviously.

Lifting his chin the general replied as if the mayor’s opinion was hardly his concern. “She is still out there. I have considered that perhaps she was the witch.”

Shrugging, the mayor pulled back into his auto. He waved. “Well then, keep me posted, and I will see you at the celebration.”

His driver shifted from park and started back into the street. Gailert watched him, though he regarded the Sky Child mayor with a petty shake of his head.

“I believe that man has no idea about the work that it takes to keep up this nation,” the general said.

His boy looked up at him then after the automobile.

“Come. Let’s head to the market. I need to arrange a new suit coat for me, and how about a nicer vest for you.” Gailert gazed down at the boy with a smile.

“Really?” The boy stared. His eyes went wide with eager anticipation.

Patting his head, the general continued on. “Of course. We ought to all be looking our best at the Emergence Day celebration.”

“I’m going too?” the boy asked.

Smiling, Gailert nodded. “Of course. We all have reason to celebrate. You included.”

The boy practically skipped the rest of the way as they continued on up the road.

At the tailor’s shop where the tailor had several bolts of fine fabric on display for suit coats, the general took his time selecting what he and his boy would wear. He also chose some silky fabric so that the dressmaker would be able to sew up a perfect gown for his woman that was complimentary to his suit coat. If he had to come to the celebration he was going to come in style. After all, often at these celebrations the blue-eyed Sky Children tried to play up their privileged status as gifted descendants of the Sky Lord. Most brown-eyeds hated coming to such celebrations since they often were teased at such functions. Not once had Gailert allowed the blue-eyes to make him feel inferior. And if he had to come and represent the military, standing as a brown-eye among all the blues, he was going to make an impression they would never forget.

The boy carried the packages as they walked home several hours later. When they entered the front room and the porter took the general’s coat, the boy carried them up the stairs into the room, setting them on the floor. The hired mistress was already there adjusting the straps to her slinky dress. She cast the boy a wan look then straightened up for the general who would come in soon, putting on an alluring smile.

“Ah.” He walked into the room, sighing as he crossed the threshold. “You’re here. Good. I have a gift for you.”

“A gift for me?” Her eyes brightened. Closing the distance between them, she wrapped her arm around his waist.

The boy ducked down and hurried out of the room to get out of the general’s way.

“A dress. We are going to the celebration this weekend,” Gailert said. He then lifted up a shining chain of sapphires, dangling it in the light. “And this you will wear with it.”

She let him slip it around her neck, lifting up her hair to make it easy. “Will I get to keep it?”

“We’ll see,” he said, clipping both ends together. “It entirely depends on how well you perform tonight.”

Turning and wrapping her arms around his neck, resting against his chest, she gazed up at him with a feminine chuckle. “Oh, not to worry about that. I look forward to our nights together.”

He leaned in and stroked her mouth with his lips. However, as she leaned up to received him more passionately, he turned and led her with his arm around her waist towards the door. “Come on. Supper first.”

Smiling, she sauntered with him into the hallway and down the stairs to the dining room. They always ate well at the general’s table.

*

The general’s boy was starving. Watching the food sellers all day had been enough torture. But as they cleaned up their carts as the night fell, the gnawing at his stomach sides had grown worse. The general’s boy wished he had grabbed some fruit off the trees in that grove when he had the chance, but at the time he had thought the fruit pickers would have noticed him if he had.

The market cleared out. Each seller packed up his or her wares and closed their booths. He watched them leave, some in groups but mostly one by one until the alley cleared. The majority of them rolled back towards the farmland where the crops had been grown, though the bakers went uptown and some inside the living areas where they had smaller shops. Watching them, the boy followed in the shadows, wondering what he may have missed from not venturing any further inside the lower town. Besides, he had a feeling that he ought not linger on the open street any longer.

Most of the humans were going in for the night, closing their windows and lighting their oil lamps. Whereas uptown the electric lamps were already flickering on and partygoers were running about setting up for the Sky Child Festival of Emergence. He had seen them start, wondering if it was wise to be out late. During the Emergence celebrations in Roan, the blue-eyes became a little more dangerous than usual, celebrating their gift of touch. The days before their origin holiday, they always spent time hanging garlands of lights over the roads with streamers and banners celebrating. But if they ever saw a human not indoors, they teased them with their gift by touching them and stealing their thoughts then mocking them with their worst fears.

So, creeping quietly in the growing shadows, he followed the bakers home. It took him to an ordinary shop inside the central part of the lower neighborhood where there were other stores, some selling pickled eggs, smoked meats, and several varieties of dried fruit along with household items. The shopkeepers there were already closing up. They blew out the lamps and slid their doors shut, locking them with iron locks. Swinging their keys, they walked confidently away to their homes.

Creeping from the shadow he had been hiding in, the general’s boy inched his way to the shop that advertised meat and dried fruit. He peered over his shoulder and walked to the door, lifting the all-key from his neck. He stuck it into the lock. It took some jiggling, but he heard the pins inside the lock click and the door clasp undo. Sliding the doors apart just wide enough for his body, he slipped in and closed the doors behind him.

The entire room was black with no light except for a crack shining out of the back room. It didn’t seem likely that the shopkeeper would lock the door with a light still left on, so he quietly crept to the nearest barrel and stuck is hand in. It was wet and smelled of salt and vinegar. What he drew up was a pickled cucumber. He lifted it to his mouth, smelling it then gnawing on the end with a good strong bite.

The back room door slid open shining more light into the room. “Hey! Who’s in there?”

The boy ducked behind the barrel. His heart pounded.

“I got him,” someone announced just as he grabbed the boy’s arm. Heaving the boy up as the pickle dropped in panic, the man hissed, “It’s a kid.”

He dragged the boy toward the light. In it stood a tall silhouette of a man with a knife in his hand. It was difficult to see anything else, as the light shone bright in the boy’s face. He held up his hand to block it out.

“A farmer’s boy? What’s he doing here?” the silhouette demanded.

“What are you doing so far from home?” The one holding him shook him hard.

“I’m sorry,” the general’s boy said, “Just let me go.”

“What was he doing in here, though?” the man in the doorway repeated with bite. “Didn’t Farsal lock the door?”

“Yeah, how’d you get in?” The other one shook him again.

“I was just hungry,” the general’s boy struggled to get loose.

“That was not what we asked!”

The man slapped him, but the boy had already ducked his head.

“Hey, wait a minute,” another man squeezed past the one in the doorway, crouching over their captive and pulling up his pant legs. “Look at this. He’s got on leg irons.”

“Please let me go,” the general’s boy whimpered again.

“He’s someone’s slave.”  

The one holding him shook the general’s boy harder. “Who’s your master?”

The other ripped off the kid’s hat and grabbed his face, glaring into it. “Tell us!”

“Hey, hey, guys,” the one that had seen his irons now said. “Look at his hair. Doesn’t that remind you of someone?”

The boy’s heart jumped. Using all the force he had, the general’s boy kicked the man holding him with his leg iron in the shins and bit the man’s hand.

The man howled, grabbing his wrist. The other lost grip of the boy’s face. Toppling backward, the boy rolled over in a scramble for the door.

But already it was too late to get out that way. Another man blocked his exit. He also had a knife.

Diving under through the barrels at his left, the general’s boy shoved through, looking for another way out. He spotted a paper window just beyond the selling counter.

“Stop him before he brings the blue-eyes down on us!”

The boy slammed through boxes of dried peaches and apricots, shoving to the window. Scrambling up, he pushed the pane to the side only to find it also locked. Turning around, he reached for a box. Heaving it over his, he would smash the window open.

Someone else grabbed the box, wrenching it from his fingers. “Hold it! Hold it! Hold it!”

“Stop him!”

“I got him!” But the man who said that missed the boy by a foot. The general’s boy threw himself at the window, using his left shoulder as a battering ram instead.

It cracked.

The one hastily put the box down. The other grabbed the boy around the waist. Joined by the other, they both worked together to keep the general’s boy from landing a solid kick on anything. And they carried him back to the light where the man with the knife stood.

Bracing for the deathblow, the general’s boy closed his eyes.

“Well, this ain’t a farm boy,” the one that he had kicked said. “He must have stole those clothes.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” the man with the knife said. “Haul him back here to the light. I want a better look at him.”

“Let me go!” The general’s boy writhed in their arms. “He’s not going to pay you for me!”

The leader of the group halted and turned. “And why is that?”

Heaving with his teeth clenched, the general’s boy stared up at the shadowy face of his captor. “Because you’re human.”

The men chuckled.

“That we are. But why would that matter?” the man holding his legs said.

Still struggling, the general’s boy could see half of the man’s face. He was