Westhaven by Rowan Erlking (best sci fi novels of all time TXT) 📕

loaves. She had two Sky Children helpers, hired hands that brought in milk, eggs, and ham from a vendor outside and cleaned the delicate parts of their master’s home. The hired workers came and went, often setting and serving breakfast for both their master and his, though it still felt too early for them to be up yet.

Finished with the potatoes, Kemdin rose from his stool, growing nervous. The knife the cook wanted him to use to peel the potatoes rested on the table. He picked it up, feeling the wood handle under his fingers, rolling it into his palm—but his arms tingled as he held it. The general never let him hold a knife. It had been forbidden him, actually. Just like using the axe to chop wood had been forbidden him. He was not to have anything that could be used as a weapon. Not yet.

So here, Kemdin sat back on his stool holding the knife that reminded him of the knives his grandfather had taught him to make. In fact, their shop made better knives. His last smithing lesson was dagger-making. Kemdin had been proud of the dagger that he had smelted, forged, folded, hammered, and sharpened. It had been a work of art. That dagger was perhaps still hiding under the hearthstones of his father’s shop, untouched, undiscovered.

A hand snatched the knife from Kemdin’s fingers. Another hand boxed his ears.

Clenching his head, Kemdin barely heard the words the blue-eye driver shouted at the cook as he kicked Kemdin off the stool and through the door to the yard. “…have a knife! Didn’t your master tell you? That boy is still hardly trained!”

“That little thing?” the cook snapped back at the corporal. “What can a scrawny boy like that do? He was just going to peel potatoes!”

“Didn’t you see the way he was looking at that knife?” the general’s driver shouted. “He could have stabbed you with it.”

The lady of the house gave him a dry look. “Stab me? I’d a knocked his head off first.”

“The kid’s father aided raiders,” the driver said. “He was an insurgent.”

And that silenced the woman. All the servants hushed up and stared at Kemdin. Their eyes widened with actual fear.

“That’s right. His father was a smithy.” He then jabbed Kemdin between his shoulder blades with the end of the knife so that it pricked him. Kemdin ducked forward to get away. His irons clanging, he tripped on the backyard stone. “And this kid learned to make arrowheads. So don’t you think he’s harmless?”

He grabbed hold of Kemdin’s hair, pulling up to look into his face. “And I haven’t forgotten it.” 

Kemdin trembled, staring at the demon’s blue-eyes, waiting for him to suck him dry.

But the driver dropped him to the stone. He kicked him once in the side. “Keep him in the yard. The general doesn’t need him handling knives, fire, or anything sharp. If you don’t have work for him, make him sit over there. We’ll collect him when we want him.”

Shrugging, the cook waved over to the footman to take Kemdin back to the woodpile where they were plucking chickens. He set Kemdin down and handed him one of the dead birds. Kemdin still rubbed his head, but he picked up the chicken and started to pull out its feathers. The driver gave him a hard look, then turned and walked back out of the yard into the kitchen.

Soon the bustle of the morning returned. Everyone was back to working. Kemdin finished with his plucking then was a made to sit as the servants cleaned up the feathers and started in with the laundry. They talked in whispers, hardly lifting their heads. Their eyes on their tasks, the bustled here and there, scrubbing and hanging the sheets and clothes of their master and the house filled the hours until the sun was high.

Kemdin shifted his feet in his chains. He watched the ants crawl through the cracks in lines. A grasshopper jumped out off a leaf then flitted with its wings over the wall to the neighboring yard. As the sheets filled the lines, fluttering in the autumn wind like clouds, a dragonfly hovered off of a leaf and zipped over the lines passing Kemdin’s view until it too went over the wall. Then one of the girls sat next to him on the bench, stretching out her legs. She sighed then yawned.

He did not look up. He didn’t dare to. It was likely the driver would come around the corner to box his ears again.

But then he felt a something cold touch his back. He jerked almost with a shout.

“Oh! Don’t—” The girl put a hand to his mouth, whispering near his ear. “I did not mean to startle you. I just wanted clean the cut.”

Kemdin looked up at her. She touched his face and turned his head away again.

“Do not look at me. It is better you do not see me,” she said. She continued to touch his back between his shoulder blades. “You were cut. But it does not look deep. I will clean it.”

“Why—?”

She put her fingers to his mouth.

“Don’t speak. I don’t doubt that you were forbidden to speak, and I do not wish to see you beaten.”

The cold wet feeling dabbed down his back. A shiver ran with it as the cool wind made his wet skin feel cold. He pulled his arms closer to keep warm feeling her wipe away the remaining dribble of blood. It had trailed even down to the top edge of his breeches. It was hard not to jump from the cold or her touch, but Kemdin pulled his arms tight to his sides to keep from moving. When she was done, she rested her hand gently on his back then patted his head, running her fingers through the tufts of white in his hair.

“You are very brave. But now be a good boy and do as your master tells you.” Her voice whispered as if it were the wind blowing through the drying clothes. “And keep your eyes where they should be. And one day, you may find freedom at your feet. And when you do, run.”

Kemdin wanted to look up, but his eyes were fixed on his chained ankles. There was no running with those chains still on. There was no escape until they were gone, and that would never happen.

The woman rose then walked away. He never did get to see which one she was.

And as the servants gathered the dry laundry in the afternoon sun, Kemdin lifted his eyes to draw in a breath, as his view of the coming storm clouds was no longer obstructed.

*

“What do you mean you left him out there?” Gailert asked the lady of the house as she flustered, red in her cheeks. “Call in my boy now and have him dried off before he catches a cold!”

     “Your man, that corporal, ordered that he stay out there near the woodshed until we have work for him, and we don’t have work for him,” she snapped.

Rolling his eyes, the Gailert gave her a disapproving look. “Have some common sense, woman. If it rains, take in my human boy. You wouldn’t leave your own servants out there, would you?”

She shook her head as if she found the conversation ridiculous to begin with, turning to the door to collect the child that had been shivering out in the yard since the rain started to fall. “Well your man, who sent him out when I was following common sense in the first place, nearly bit my head off. I wasn’t about to have a repeat of that. But if you want the boy, I’ll fetch him for you. But he’s not drying off in this house and leaving a watermark on my floor.”

“I don’t know what altercation you had between my driver and yourself, but if you don’t get that boy out of the rain and dry right now, I will be angry with you,” Gailert said. “And if he gets sick and dies, I will require full compensation for my money and time training him.”

The lady of the house did not talk back, but Gailert could tell from her posture that she was arguing in her head against him anyway. She had always been sassy, even for a brown-eyed Sky Child. Her attitude was perhaps the only thing keeping her in the position as lady of the house rather than just a cook since she intimidated even blue-eyed Sky Children. But for him, he just found it irritating.

It was three minutes before she had his boy standing in the kitchen wrapped up in a wool blanket. By that time Gailert had gone to see if she had done what he had ordered. She was tugging at the white tufts in the boy’s hair before shrugging with a gesture to the cook stove for him to sit. The boy sat down with a glance at the general as if to ask for permission. Gailert smiled and shook his head.

“Give him some broth to drink. When he is dry and warm, send him into the study. I have work for him there,” he said.

The cook lifted her eyebrows and glanced back at the boy. “Work in the study for that thing? Doing what?”

“Just send him,” Gailert said then he left the room.

He returned to the study where his friend and the master of the home had been waiting, drinking hot tea with an eye on the storm outside. The retired general looked up when Gailert entered and asked, “So, was the boy sick with the flu already?”

“Hypothermia, maybe.” Gailert snickered, taking his chair. “Now where were we?”

“We were discussing the conditions of drainage on the roads. You did have them built arched with gutters, right?” his friend the retired general asked.

Nodding, Gailert sighed. “Of course. I took all of that into consideration. You should recall last winter when the snows fell that I even took ice into account.”

“And what of heavy snowfall?” his friend asked, sipping his tea.

Gailert smiled. “Lemmun, I have proposed the construction of plows, even for the rails.”

“Snowed over rails,” General Lemmun murmured. “I wonder how much they have considered that.”

“I’m sure Governor Shillig is considering it since he has made himself so dependent on the rails,” Gailert said.

“But his altitude in comparison to ours, and proximity to the ocean, does affect the ice build up and snow, doesn’t it?” General Lemmun set down his cup. “What I am concerned about mostly is the affect weather will have on the new telegraph lines. I realize the system has been perfected, but this is telegraph we are talking about. High winds, snows, winter in Westhaven is killer.”

“Yes,” Gailert murmured, taking up his own teacup. “Which makes me worry about the city construction of Danslik. I am concerned that the city in the clouds will not become the haven the captain is imagining. Danslik peak is the highest peak in the territory. The air itself would be very thin. And what about transporting crops up there? Winters would be treacherous.”

“Perhaps that is why Captain Callens is suggesting we build the first airport there,” General Lemmun said. “I can’t imagine any other reason why he would want to promote it since nowhere else is equipped with airplanes yet.”

The cook cleared her throat.

Both men turned and watched her shove the boy forward. He was still wrapped in the blanket.

“I can’t dry his breeches while his legs are still chained together. He ought to be wearing lace-ups,” she said. “You better have him standing because I won’t stand for him leaving a watermark.”

The cook turned and walked out of the room, not giving them a chance to respond. Both generals, retired and not, turned to the other and shrugged. Gailert motioned to the boy.

“Come in boy. Stand there.” Gailert pointed to a spot on the rug.

Hanging his head like he always did, keeping his eyes watchful yet as silent as the day he had been