Sky Lord by Rowan Erlking (that summer book .txt) 📕

end of alley, Tia turned and then hurried up the road. The main thoroughfare was cobblestone, wide and clean. Commuters buzzed by on their scooters and in their fancy cars. Pedestrians kept to the curbs, some strolling up the street while others bustled to their next destination. Tia looked to the left and to the right. She could cross the street without trouble, but that was not what bothered her. All the buildings sloped down into the alleys, but there were very few private places to sneak back onto a roof to catch a bird.  She had to keep moving so she could be off to the seaport city and then to the sea. The problem was getting out of Harmas.

She turned right, heading up the hill. If anything, she decided, birds would gather in the city square where aristocrats fed them at their leisure.

Traveling up hill had never been any fun in Calcumum or anywhere else. The higher one got, the snootier the population became. The people that passed her stared down at her as if she were a disease. Keeping her eyes averted when they looked at her, she tried to hurry on. Yet as she went uphill, Tia soon noticed the main difference between Harmas and Calcumum was not in the level of snootiness but in the kinds of people she could see on the street. Along the way, going closer to the city center, she passed many different travelers. All of them were dressed in odd fashions. She recognized the ones that usually visited Calcumum: the Lords of Maldos and the Hann traders. But there were also others she had not seen before. Perhaps they were from Minor Gull, from more distant lands that did not like going as far north as Brein Amon.

The foreigners seemed to strut as they walked, wearing their fancy high collared business suits of silk, chatting with raised chins. Seeing Tia, they sneered down their noses and lifted their eyes as if she were something filthy underfoot. Their ladies trotted behind them in their high heels and narrow dresses, flashing the world a view of their long legs through the slits that ran up their thighs. They twittered together, gasping in disgust when they saw Tia pass by. Their gossip was impossible to miss.

“Ugh! Sky Children still roam free here? That thing should be chained.”

“Look at her! She has blue eyes! My slave doesn’t have such odd eyes! Are you sure she’s not a Cordril? Stinky things, the lot of them.”

“Oh, no, Cordrils are white as death himself. A far western trait I hear. That thing is a dirty dark as fecal matter.”

Their high-minded talk filled Tia with dread along with a growing sense of dislike for all people from Minor Gull. She attempted to ignore them, passing by in more of a crouch. Having begged so often in the streets of Calcumum, it was like going back to old habits. They made her feel small, and so she acted small.

They passed by and she continued on.

It got harder walking further up the hill. There was not a stray animal in sight. All the dogs and cats were on leashes. Pigeons remained on the roofs and in their coops, kept as pets rather than social nuisances. In fact, as Tia looked, she saw no trash, no tossed-out food, and no vermin chewing up the remains of someone’s week old fruit peelings. No rats. The city itself was way too clean for Tia to feel comfortable.

She frowned and stopped where she was. Looking about again, she came to a clear realization that there would be no escape if she headed up hill. She sat down on a curb near the commotion of yet another market knowing that she would have starved had she run away from her mistress to here rather than Calcumum.

Another cluster of women walked by. Some were from the southern continent, but a few were locals of Harmas. They chatted in the same catty way, glaring down at her as she sat in dejection on the curb.

“What are you doing just sitting there?” a local snapped at her, glaring from her clique of ladies. “Go back to your master! No filth is allowed to sit in the streets. You are a nuisance.”

Tia looked up at her and sighed, saying nothing.

The women in the circle gasped. “Blue eyes!”

Tia stood up. They pulled back.

“Why are you afraid of me?” Tia asked, taking a step forward. “I am nothing but a slave.”

But they stared at her more now, her cloak from the west and her bare feet. She did not look like an ordinary slave, not really.

A woman from Minor Gull stepped forward, striking Tia’s face with her bare hand. Tia felt the sting, blinking and staring at the stone as the woman shouted tirades against her, half of which she could not hear for the ringing in her ears. “…superiors! You filthy animal! Get going like she told you, and no back talk!”

Tia lifted her head. In that touch she had gotten a glimmer of the woman’s mind. It had come quicker now than before. The woman’s present thought was vividly shouting in Tia’s brain. They were heading downhill to visit a famous fortuneteller that had come into town.

The romantic dreams that transferred from the woman’s mind to Tia made her heart jump. Tia peeked at the woman. She was already pale just from touching Tia. The woman’s hand shook.

“Excuse me, m’lady. I beg your forgiveness for my rudeness.” Bowing her head, Tia turned and headed back down the hill.

The women glared at Tia as she hurried away, hissing epithets filled with hate after her. The last word she heard, though, were not to her at all.

“Diti, you are quite green! Do you need to sit down?”

Tia heard the foreign woman who had slapped her reply with a trembling voice, “I felt like I just shook hands with death.”

Tia did not wait to hear the rest.

 

Going downhill proved quicker, and Tia felt like kicking herself for thinking too much like a bird. Of course high ground was cleaner and snootier. The rats and strays would be in the poorer districts, downhill. It would also place her in the city skirts where there were less people willing to watch their neighbors. There escape was possible.

But her motives for going down hill had also changed. With the taste of the woman’s thoughts spilling into her mind, strange ideas started to form that she had not considered before. This fortuneteller the women were going to see was a world traveler. He claimed to have visited every country. He had given fortunes to every kind of person. He had traveled into Minor Gull, Greater Gull, and even to the sea where many lands still went undiscovered surrounded by waters fraught with pirates and sea monsters. Some said he was a pirate, while others claimed he was seer that could see the entire lives of anyone—past, present and future. With this knowledge, Tia thought that perhaps if he could see into the future, then maybe he could predict what she should do in her future. And if he could see the past, then he could tell her about the Sky Lord. If anything, Tia wanted to know what was in store for her. Any direction would be better than going ahead on a whim.

But the woman did not have the proper directions to the fortuneteller’s shop in her head, and Tia soon found herself very lost. The streets had gotten narrower and dirtier the further down the hill she had traveled, and the men that worked along the roads had more sinister looks in their eyes as they gazed on her.

Tia wrapped her cloak tighter about herself. Already jumpy and shaking, she hoped that she would be able to find the fortuneteller soon. The sun was still high. But from her experience, the murky parts of any city were not places to linger.

“Hey, girlie,” one man loitering near a pub with his pals called over to her.

Tia walked faster, turning to peer down another road that seemed to lead to more small hovels on the city skirts.

They followed her.

“Your master might miss you. Are you sneaking away?” he asked.

“Are you lost?” Another man on the street grinned, sticking his face in front of hers. He grabbed her arm and cloak.

“Please let me go,” Tia said, ducking her eyes. “You can’t have any business with me. I am nobody.”

The men laughed as the one man forcibly dragged her into the alley. No matter how she tried to push out of his grip, she could not stop from being dragged off. He yanked her into the shadows. His hand reached for her chest. “Then no one will miss you.”

The echoes of the men’s laughter rang in her ears as he shoved her against the wall, groping what he could get his hands on as he pried apart her cloak. His grip was too strong, and she could not lift her arms to push against his face. Unable to touch his skin to drain him, she could do nothing to defend herself. Tia closed her eyes.

“Prison!” the man exclaimed, staring at the numbers on her uniform.

Tia’s chest heaved, still pinned against the wall with his work-glove-covered hands.

“What did you do? Steal?” The man laughed

“Murder,” Tia replied, glaring as darkly as she could with her piercing blue eyes. She hoped her deadly look would scare him off, if not her eye color.

He only laughed, lifting his chin. “Then we are a perfect match. Only I don’t get caught.”

A tremor ran through her. She stared at his cold dark eyes knowing he was not lying. With those gloves on his hands, would she be his next victim?

“Leave some of her for me next,” his pal standing near by called over with a chuckle.

“I want some time with her too,” the other said.

Closing her eyes again, Tia braced for his assault.

“Let’s take this off first.” The man snickered. He tore apart the neck of her prison uniform, placing his face into the gap. As the skin of his lips touch her shivering flesh, images flashed in her mind of his lustful desires to rape, torture, and then discard her as garbage. Writhing in his grip, she fought fighting to get away as he tried to maul her with his roving hands and lips. Tia screamed, but laughs only answered her. He then clamped his mouth on hers to silence her, slobbering his tongue as if to choke her into submission. But then Tia leaned forward in the kiss.

At first he was startled. Pleasure at the returned pressure transferred to her mind as he pressed in harder with desperation to strip her entirely. But he did not get what he was after. Lip to lip, skin against skin, he suddenly found her touch to be more manly than woman. He tried to pull back, but Tia forced the contact forward, keeping lip locked. Shouts of terror came from his friends and soon the rapist also fell to the dirty cobble streets, staring up with ashen cheeks at himself.

Tia-the-rapist-and-killer turned with a glare at the men. She bent over plucking the man’s knife from a side pocket, kicking him hard in the side.

“You! You! Demon!” his friend and past accomplice screamed, toppling against the garbage cans.

“Demon!” The other scrambled out the alley, deserting the others.

Getting onto his feet, his pal chased after him.

Left alone with her unconscious assailant, Tia glared with hate. His thoughts were all lust, power, and greed. The memories of many tortured women filled his mind as exciting conquests. He loved the hunt, and loved more still the bullying strength that he had. But he was a coward, and Tia knew that he would strike again if he could. Bending over, she picked up his dead weight, dragging him out toward the street. But then she stopped and stared back at her own clothes that merely mimicked his. It was too