Daughter of War Page 8

  "Of course, anything you wish."

  He blinked and the shadow was gone, empty grey ceiling staring back at him. He realised he would need to explain the project being shut down to the Twelve Crowns. The conversation wouldn't be pleasant. He didn't answer to them, not technically, but their approval by vote was required by Ermoori law on military matters. Arthor rolled to his side again, thinking. The voice didn't come again, but neither did sleep.

  Mara

  As soon as the curtains were pulled open, the woman screamed. Mara recognised the scream right away; It wasn't shock or fear, but pain. She quickly yanked the curtains closed again. The woman was on her knees with her hands pressed firmly against her eyes, moaning in agony.

  "Please," she gasped, "don't ever do that again."

  Mara stared at the woman. "What are you?" she breathed. But the woman was already asking questions of her own, and didn't hear.

  "Where does that much light even come from? How can it be so powerful?"

  Mara hesitated. She knew about the sun, of course, but she was no scientist; she wouldn't be able to explain how it worked or where it came from the way Riffolk probably could. Women weren't allowed to study academics beyond primary school. Instead they were taught cooking and cleaning, etiquette and ladylike behaviour.

  "The sun is a... sort of giant ball of fire and light, I think. It's what makes day and night; when the sun is up, that's day, and when it's gone, that's night."

  The woman was staring at her blankly.

  "Didn't you ever wonder why day is bright and night is dark before?" Mara asked slowly. She had wondered the very same thing when she was a child.

  "We don't have the sun where I come from. Or day, or night. I've never seen that much light, or even heard of it."

  Mara shook her head.

  "That doesn't make sense. The sun goes around the entire world, everyone knows that. There's nowhere that the sun doesn't touch. It was made by God, so that plants could grow and people could see and feel the warmth of His love."

  The words of the Priests always comforted her, and reciting them now filled her with certainty again. And miraculously, the woman was now looking at her with surprised elation.

  "God? You mean the Creator?"

  "Yes!" Mara almost squealed it. "God is the Creator of everything, He is our lord and saviour!"

  The woman closed her eyes in relief, and Mara finally relaxed her fear and suspicion a little. If God's name brought this much happiness to the strange woman, she couldn't possibly be a demon, or a test, and certainly not one of the Godless tree people.

  "It must be," the woman said to herself, "thank the Creator, it must be!"

  "Must be what?"

  "This is heaven, isn't it? I've been brought to the Creator's Kingdom after Tyra was attacked by the monsters?"

  Tyra? Monsters? Mara had never heard of Tyra, but the woman's mention of monsters brought a shudder down her spine. Something finally occurred to her.

  "What is your name?"

  The woman glanced up at her, looking vulnerable and alone.

  "Pera," she whispered, "what's yours?"

  "My name is Mara Wats- Hayne. Mara Hayne. I'm very sorry Pera, but this is certainly not heaven," Mara said quietly. She finished the thought in her head. God would never let someone like Riffolk into His Kingdom.

  They spent the rest of that day talking. Pera knew nothing at all about Ermoor, or Pandeia for that matter. Mara knew nothing about the mysterious land Pera came from either, and she was fascinated by it. It was called Tyra. It was a cold place, in perpetual darkness. As Pera spoke, Mara's fascination turned to shock, and then eventually to horror.

  The Tyrans spent all of their time turning gigantic wheels that they called "wheels of life". If the wheels stopped, monsters appeared from nowhere and attacked, killing anyone in their path. Mara interrupted quietly.

  "What do they do?"

  Pera stopped talking, frowning at Mara.

  "I told you, they kill us. As many as they can until we start turning-"

  "No, the wheels. What do they do?"

  "They... must be turned, they are the wheels of life." Pera looked as though she couldn't think clearly.

  "They must keep turning to appease the Creator."

  "But turning them must do something. That's how machines work."

  "Machines? What are machines?"

  Mara closed her eyes, trying not to get frustrated with the woman. She knew nothing about the world; nothing at all. At the same time, she wasn't sure she knew enough to explain things to Pera in a way she would understand.

  "Machines make things easier for people. Things like lights, showers, carts, teleradios, ovens. They work on their own, powered by electricity that goes through pipes, which come up from-"

  Mara almost choked on her own words as a sudden, horrible realisation swept through her mind. The night Pera had appeared; she mentioned the wheel rooms were empty, no one turning them; and the street lights had gone out...

  "Oh, no. Oh no, no, no!"

  Pera looked as horrified as Mara felt, her eyes wide and her already pale face ghostly. Mara got herself under control, but couldn't look Pera in the eyes as she voiced her fears.

  "I think... I think I know what the wheels of life do."

  Every building in Ermoor was powered by electricity. None of the citizens knew where it came from, and almost none of them cared. They were content in their comfortable lives, and taught to be grateful to God for what they had. Who in their right mind would question God for His gifts? Mara had previously been one of the people who didn't care where her comfort came from. More accurately, she had been too terrified to question it. God had seen fit to give her a life of luxury; if she asked why, He could just as easily take it away from her.

  As she explained what she knew of electricity, which wasn't much at all, Pera's face grew stony. It had to come from somewhere, she had explained, and the cables which carried it always began and ended in the ground. Pera had come up from underneath Ermoor, in a world with no power or light, from a life of turning gigantic cogs. Mara had seen cogs turning inside a few of Riffolk's inventions. She was far from a genius, but she could put all of the information in front of her together, and it painted a horrifyingly clear picture.

  "Riffolk Hayne is the Overseer for Scientific Advancement. He invented pretty much every modern machine in Ermoor. He designs and builds it all in his laboratory in Darkpoint. He couldn't possibly have designed the wheels of life, but he must surely be aware of them. How else could Ermoor have so much power?"

  Pera shook her head. "No," she said, "I don't believe it. All of Tyra, all of my people, just to give you power? That's insane!"

  Mara desperately tried to think of some other explanation, another way to link all of the clues together. Could they really be unrelated? Maybe Riffolk and the other Overseers didn't know where the power came from either? She hoped so, for their sake. Using people like that, a whole population, for electricity, was evil. God would punish those responsible. Riffolk was smarter than to defy God in such a horrific way. The thought that he might be aware of Tyra terrified her. But there was no other conclusion she could reach.

  "I'm so, so sorry, Pera. I truly hope it isn't so. But I can't think of any other explanation."

  Something happened suddenly within Pera's pale, squinting eyes; a complete change. Pera sat up straighter, her mouth hardening into a straight line, her eyes shining with something scary.

  "I need to know," she said. Her voice was strong and even. She sounded like a different person.

  "I need to see for myself. Take me to Riffolk's laboratory."

  Elana

  Kaizeluun were the best of the best. Legendary even among the Shenza. Elana was among the best of the Kaizeluun; she was aware of this. From the moment she passed the shadow trials and forged her Kaizuun, she was given the most secretive and most pressing missions by the Duulshen. Her current mission, to the grim and awful land of Ermoor, was easily the mo
st important so far. Find out what they're planning, the Duulshen had told her, Gather as much information as you can, and then stop them by any means. But above all, do not be seen!

  She was crouched inside a barrel, alongside others just like it full of luduk, the fish found around Shanaken. Luduk were exported to almost every country in Pandeia, except Ermoor. But Tarsium had open trade agreements with the Ermoori, and the Tarsi bought plenty of the fish from Shanaken. Elana simply had to accompany the fisher's boats to Tarsium, oversee the transaction and the loading of fish to a barge bound for Ermoor, then slip inside one of the barrels before it was loaded. Easy enough, especially since she could wrap herself in shadow and become almost invisible. She had been Kaizeluun for almost ten years now, and such magic was second nature to her. Each tattoo still tingled when she used the spell that corresponded to it; despite the years, she wasn't used to the feeling.

  The journey to Ermoor took about a month by sea. She would be able to eat a little bit of fish when she needed to, but she didn't want to make the Ermoori suspicious. Her barrel had been snuck in and didn't appear on the barge's manifest, and by the time the barge arrived in Ermoor, she would be long gone; hopefully, they wouldn't think too much of an extra, empty barrel. But missing fish that they'd paid for? That would invite questions and investigation.

  Luckily, there were spells which could help her survive the journey with little to no food or water. She had used them before, but only in her training. This journey would be a perfect test of her survival skills. She remained in the barrel, unmoving, for three days. No one had come to check on the cargo, and on the fourth day she finally pushed off the lid and climbed out. The cargo room was pitch black, long, low and narrow. Elana traced one of the tattoos next to her eye with a finger, and the darkness opened to her, hiding nothing. Satisfied that she was alone, she replaced the barrel's lid and walked down the cargo room to the very back. She shuffled some barrels around to create a narrow space between them and the wall where she could comfortably lay down, and prepared for the long journey ahead.

  Pera

  The words burned into her heart as fiercely as the sun's light had burned into her eyes. Tyra, her home, her entire life and people, were nothing but a source of power for the people living above them. It didn't make sense, but at the same time there was some small part of her that understood it was true. How long had this been happening? How had it started?

  Even worse, this woman's husband seemed to be some sort of creator of machines, using the power taken from Tyra to build things that gave the people of Ermoor comfortable, luxurious lives. It made her sick, and furious. A deep, aching rage trembled through her body from her very soul. The power of it darkened her vision, inky red bleeding into the corners of the beautiful bedroom.

  She would kill this man, and anyone else who had dared take so much from Tyra while keeping them in the dark. There was no one she could trust, that was clear. This woman, who's husband was central to the exploitation of her people, was no exception. For some reason she seemed to think they were on friendly terms, and that was fine for now; it would be useful. But Pera had a mission; and she would do anything to complete it.

  She turned to the woman, hiding as much of her rage as she could.

  "I need to know," she said. "I need to see for myself. Take me to Riffolk's laboratory."

  "I – I can't," Mara said, "not right now. Not until after dark, and we'll have to be careful."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Well without a man to escort us, we can't leave the mansion. I've snuck out a few times though, and if we're careful, we can-"

  "A man to escort us? Why would we need a man?" Mara looked confused. Her brow furrowed.

  "It's... the rules," she hesitated, "God says that a woman's rightful place is below a man. It's how things have always been; how things must be. A woman's purpose is to serve, to clean, and to bear children. We must stay in the house, we must stay quiet, and we must do as we're told. It is God's will, for the good of all."

  She added the last sentence in one breath, her eyes down, the words dry and automatic. As though she'd said it a thousand times before. As though she'd be punished if she didn't. Pera felt sick. She almost pitied Mara; would have if not for her people using the Tyrans as unwitting labourers for generations beyond count. For a while, she had assumed the Creator her people worshipped was the same as the God Mara continually talked about, but it simply could not be true.

  "What kind of God forces half of His subjects to be inferior to the other half?"

  Mara stared at her in horror.

  "God loves us all! He does not force us, he gives us life and love and comfortable lives! But there are rules to follow if we are to be allowed into Heaven; only the pure can live for eternity in His arms."

  Now it was Pera's turn to stare, horrified, as Mara spoke. It was nothing like what she'd been taught about the Creator. She couldn't help but wonder which version was correct; The Creator who loved all His people equally, or the Creator who demanded rules and restrictions in return for His love. There couldn't be more than one God... could there? The idea was somehow terrifying. Mara talked for a while, teaching her about the Ermoori version of God. The more she spoke, the more scared Pera became.

  Ermoor's streets were cold and far too bright, the twinkling lights stabbing at her eyes. Pera was slowly getting used to it, although she didn't enjoy them; but the fog made her uncomfortable. It felt oppressive somehow, as though it was set on purpose to stop people wandering at night.

  As they walked through the streets, she felt claustrophobic, despite being outside. There was something wrong with Ermoor. Everything wrong with it. So many subtle things, small uncomfortable things like the way Mara spoke about God and the fact she had servants to do her bidding.

  She glanced at the girl walking beside her. She still seemed scared to be walking outside without a man present. It disgusted Pera; there was no part of the concept that made sense to her. It was almost as though women were seen as belongings, not real people but some sort of decoration, to be carried around on the arm of a man like an accessory. The more she thought about it, the more furious she became.

  Mara wasn't just accepting her place in Ermoor's society, either; she embraced it. Totally believed it. There seemed to be no doubt at all in her mind that Ermoor was perfect just the way it was. She believed that women were underneath men just as fervently as the men of Ermoor believed it.

  Riffolk's lab was a little while away, and Pera found the walk just fed her rage, where usually a walk through Tyra's corridors helped calm her down. She was certain Riffolk knew about the Wheels, and that he was intentionally exploiting Tyra. Mara seemed genuinely unaware; her sudden realisation about the Wheels was believable. But was this girl really innocent? How innocent could a person be, if they loved a society as broken and corrupt as Ermoor? Her belief in the Ermoori God was terrifying; so many of the "rules" of her religion were absolutely repulsive.

  She suddenly realised this could easily be a trap. Mara could be just as awful as the rest of Ermoor, could be in league with her husband. Pera might have been manipulated into wanting to search the lab in the first place... No, she decided, this girl is genuine. Naive, stupid maybe, but not plotting against me. They walked silently, and Pera occasionally caught glimpses of Mara staring at her. She walked a little too close to Pera, and though the cold was brutal, the closeness was worse.

  Antony

  Antony dried off the last vial in the set, placing it in the second drawer down in the cabinet in the lab's corner. Gurgling filled the lab's silence as the basin drained of soapy water. He was the last assistant there, and he'd stayed back more than two hours after the others had gone home. Overseer Hayne was a miserable prick. He'd picked on Antony since day one of the internship, and for no reason other than his surname happened to be Fleming. It wasn't Antony's fault that his great grandfather invented the light bulb. He didn't understand why Overseer Hayne was so jealous and petty o
ver such an invention when he'd personally revolutionised all of Ermoor's technological advancement since.

  Almost everything had been cleaned, packed, and stored. Since Overseer Hayne's project was shut down almost two weeks ago, the assistants had been tasked with shutting down the lab. It was a monumental task; the lab was complex and busy, with hundreds of instruments performing dozens of experiments. Today was the final day, and for the first time Antony had ever seen, the lab was empty, dark and silent.

  He wiped off the suds and water from the basin until it gleamed, each swipe of the cloth making him more angry. He shouldn't have to stay behind when all the other assistants had left. Despite his anger, there was a savage victory in the act of cleaning the lab; Overseer Hayne had been shut down. His work, his precious projects, all of it stopped. Antony wasn't aware of the details of most of the projects being worked on. Just like the other assistants, he was given small individual tasks with no contextual information, and no understanding of how his work fit into that of his colleagues.

  A few boxes sat on one of the smooth benches in the room's centre. They had to be put in a storage room, the room locked, then he'd have to make a final sweep to make sure everything was packed. He walked to the bench on which they sat, laying a hand on either side of the top box.

  A scuffling sound echoed down one of the corridors, clear in the heavy silence. The courtyard? There was no way into the courtyard except through the lab itself. Antony frowned. Maybe one of the other assistants hadn't left after all. He took a few steps towards the courtyard door before his mind caught up. It could be Overseer Hayne. The assistants all knew there was a secret lab, though none of them knew where the entrance was. The courtyard made sense...