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

out. On orders, Saimon lifted the boy up on to his feet then set his hand against the child’s face, pressing him against the wall so he could not slither away. The boy struggled at first, but soon hung limp as Saimon drew out his thoughts. Dropping the child where he was, the porter turned and sighed with a shrug.

“He was not lying to you, sir. The boy read everything in front of his eyes as practice. He thought you wanted him to learn to read everything.” Saimon then walked up the steps to go return back to bed.

Gailert trembled, feeling a chill of dread despite his porter’s words. Turning, he stared at the child who lay unconscious on the ground. With a stomp he followed his porter back up the stairs and to the servants’ quarters. “But what is his intent? Why read military maps?”

Passing the grandfather clock that chimed at the half hour, closing his eyes with a yawn, his porter shrugged. “It was in front of him, sir. No reason behind it.”

“Not even a plan for an escape?” Gailert asked, looking back towards the cellar. “To see insurgents?”

The porter shook his head, opening his door. “Sorry. No. He was just reading to read. The kid doesn’t know what he should and should not read. Maybe you ought to teach him if you really want him to read at all. No disrespect.”

Gailert nodded. He turned slowly, scuffing his slipper feet as he walked back to his room. Perhaps General Lemmun’s warning had at last sunk in. It was dangerous for a slave to know how to read, especially if he was someone that had known rebels, and even more if he knew what the words meant. His porter was right also. He had better teach his boy what was allowable to read and what was not since he could no longer undo the child’s literary education.

*

Kemdin ached all over when he woke that frigid autumn morning at the base of the stairs. He had scrapes on his arms and legs and one on his face, all which stung, as well as a number of bruises all over. The fact that he had not broken anything was moot consolation to the terror he felt waiting to meet the general again.

The general’s manservant fetched him before breakfast and practically carried him into the frosty yard for his morning chores as if the night incident had not happened. Only one thing did the blue-eye say that reminded him that incident occurred, was this: “Keep your reading eyes on the ground from now on, unless you are called to read.”

Kemdin had been wracking his brains all morning trying to figure out what he had read that had offended the general. As unpredictable as the weather, that demon’s moods were often just as terrible. One moment General Winstrong spoke of life as a banquet of knowledge that he wanted to share with others around him, the next he was savagely defending his position of authority as if every living soul were seeking his demise. It was like the demon was playing a twisted game.

It also reminded Kemdin of the time when his father lectured him about waiting for the molten metal to be entirely liquid before pouring it into the molds. His father’s words were clear: check your metal before removing it from the fire. It was like saying check the water before jumping into the lake. Check the temperature of the arrowheads before breaking them from the molds. Do not jump ahead on assumptions. Know before you do. But for Kemdin to think that his master the general jumped to conclusions and acted before he thought them through would earn him a beating. His master never admitted to anything less than perfection, even in his overeager idealism.

That was something Kemdin did not need to read. He heard it everywhere, if not especially at the military post when he sat and waited for errands to do. The soldiers whispered about how the general was famous for dreaming up schemes that were somewhat half-cocked. His talk of civilizing the humans was joked about as incredibly idealistic. His fetish for automobile travel outside of the cities was also a point the soldiers jabbed at, and each time they did they glanced at Kemdin to see if he would ever repeat what they had said. A number of them had even threatened him to keep silent.

But of course Kemdin wouldn’t dare say a word to the general about in-office gossip. He was more likely to be punished for it than they would. Instead Kemdin kept it inside and mulled over what he had to do to keep from angering the demon that kept him captive.

After chores when he gnawed on his bread and meat, pulling his arms close to his body to keep warm, Kemdin thought over all the things he might have read that made the general angry with him. General Winstrong had shouted at him for reading something he should have known he oughtn’t, but reading was the very thing the general had him to do. In fact the general had told him to practice reading everything in front of him. It made no sense. Actually, the way the general looked at him made no sense. The demon’s scanning dark eyes often peered at Kemdin’s face as if he believed the boy could read everything in his mind from a look into his eyes. Perhaps it was the general’s way of trying to absorb thoughts without the demon touch Kemdin now knew the general didn’t have. In fact, the general was practically human. And for some reason, that was more terrifying.

“Boy.”

Kemdin looked up from his seat in the kitchen. The maid walked out, nodding to the general who stood in the doorway. Kemdin swallowed his last piece, watching the general’s cold expression on his face.

“Clean up. Be at the door in ten minutes,” the general said.

Watching him go, Kemdin slowly rose from his stool, wiping his mouth. The general’s footfalls sounded militaristic and brisk, businesslike. That was usually a bad sign.

Rushing to the wash basin, Kemdin gathered freezing water in his hands and splashed his face, rubbing it and then his arms and chest before shuffling to the kitchen door. His chains dragged after him, making more noise than usual as he ran his damp hands through his hair. The white tufts stuck up as the brown parts flopped back down again. Pushing the door open, he cautiously walked out where the porter was gathering the general’s coat and umbrella for his exit. The porter hardly looked down at him when he arrived.

The general marched out of his study with a scroll in one hand stacked with a book and a large envelope in the other. He shifted hands as he put on his greatcoat, and then again for the other arm, hardly looking at Kemdin as he did. Receiving his umbrella, he gave one wave for Kemdin to walk behind as the porter opened the door. The general marched out into the chill autumn air with Kemdin on his heels, even to the automobile where the driver stood with the door open and waiting as his breath puffed in front of him.

The general climbed in first, as usual. Then he beckoned Kemdin in with a glare. “Get in.”

Bowing his head, Kemdin did as ordered, still wondering what he had read that had offended the general so much. But the general did not say a word the entire trip down the hill to the military post. He mostly glared at the road ahead in silence as if he was thinking of the easiest way to tear Kemdin’s skin off of his face. When they stopped, the demon turned and spoke as dangerously as the day he had held a hot iron to Kemdin’s chest. “Hear what I say, child. You do not read unless I tell you to read, just as you do not speak unless I tell you to speak. Understood?”

Kemdin’s eyes were fixed on him feeling that same terror. He swallowed so he could speak. “Yes, sir.”

The general leaned in closer so that they were almost nose-to-nose. The boy’s body practically pressed against the door.

“And you are never to contradict me again. Not even if I am wrong,” the general said through his teeth. “Now I am going to send you on an errand into the city. The people of this city know to whom you belong. So if you try to sneak off, or if you try to run, the soldiers here have been ordered to shoot. Not kill to you but to cripple you and drag you back to my feet.”

Kemdin’s eyes were watering, feeling his heart pound in his chest. He was too terrified to close them in case the general assumed he was avoiding answering him. The tears rolled down the sides of his face even as he clutched the seat.

“Do you know what it feels like to be shot, boy?” the general asked, tilting his head so that one earthy eye peered like an arrow into the center of the Kemdin’s face.

Kemdin wanted to shake his head, but he didn’t dare to incase the general thought he was contradicting him.

“It burns.” The general then poked Kemdin right against the scar on his chest. “You know what burning feels like.”

The boy shook now. Sweat emerged all over his face.

“Now go. Walk to the apothecary’s shop and hand him this note.” The general shoved a folded paper in his hands. “Do not open it and do not read it. Then return immediately to my office, and we’ll see what I’ll do with you then.”

The general opened the door right behind Kemdin. The boy dropped right out, his head striking the stone with a dull thud, though his back took most of the blow, knocking the breath out of him.

Stepping over him as if he were a rotted piece of trash, the general continued on his way to his office, turning the corner into the doorway without looking back once.

The driver kicked Kemdin’s feet to shove him out of the way as the child lay on the curb, shutting the door. “Get out of the road, kid.”

Scrambling onto his feet, knowing the driver would not hesitate to crush him under the wheels of that auto if he had the opportunity, rubbing his head, Kemdin exhaled with a cold puff of air then looked around him pulling his arms across his bare chest to keep warm. This was new. It was the first time the general sent him to go alone. Kemdin looked up at the soldiers standing at the doors of the military post in their warm jackets, the pair of them armed with rifles. He knew they wouldn’t hesitate at all to shoot him if their general had given them the order. He took a step back. It was incentive enough to hurry on his errand.

He knew where the apothecary shop was. Kemdin had gone there several times with the general for a medicine that eased the general’s indigestion with the purpose of the boy learning his common stops for when he would start to run errands on his own. It was clear that now was the time.

Kemdin clutched the note in his hands. The writing on the front was neat and obvious. Reading had been easy once he learned that the names of marks and the sounds the marks represented. However, to read this note after being ordered not to perhaps meant a beating, or maybe he would be shot. So, Kemdin ignored the first word, which was not the apothecary’s name or address but something else entirely unrelated, and he hopped into the frosty street, walking as fast as his leg irons allowed.

Going through the city on foot was always a different experience than traveling by auto. Usually the general and he only walked short distances from the automobile to places for Kemdin to learn them,