“Not that quick on your feet, eh boy?” I say. “No wonder nobody wants to go with you on Missions.” I smile at him and watch him seethe.
“That’s enough!” Kismet yells, standing between us.
“Take it somewhere else, boys.” Dicky says, rolling his eyes.
“No, you’re not fighting anymore, not here and not anywhere else.” Kismet scolds. Henrick and I glare at each other. I clench and unclench my fists, but then begrudgingly look away.
“Whatever.” Henrick says. “I’m out of here. I’ll see you both again when Daniel has calmed the fuck down.” I hear his footsteps grow fainter as he walks away.
“Ready to go?” Kismet asks me after a while. Her mouth is set in a fine line. I know she’s mad at me for starting the fight, but I don’t care.
We walk back through the rising and falling stairs and turn to go toward our room.
“The only reason he tags along is because he likes you.” I say, waiting to see if she’ll take the bait.
“He’s just a kid.” She says, sounding tired.
“Yeah, a highly annoying one.”
She ignores me. Guess she’s not in a mood to fight after all.
You can’t blame me for wanting to pick a fight. After all, I just saw her kill someone who might have been innocent, which goes against our rules. And I’m not really sure if I’m angry, sad, or envious. It’s enough to drive any guy mad.
“I thought you’d be concerned over the fact that Benedict is apparently not home yet.” Kismet says quietly after a while.
“So you noticed that too.”
“Impossible not to since our guy wasn’t in the cell.” She answers. “What do you make of it?”
We pass caves, entrances and corridors in silence until we reach the common hall of the dormitories. It’s a large lobby with irregularly spaced rooms carved out on the walls, with nothing but a thin sheet to act as a barrier between the inside of the room and the outside of the hall. The only light we have comes from the kerosene lamps hanging on the wall.
“Benedict does his own thing, you know how he is.” I finally say.
Kismet raises an eyebrow. “He’s never taken off with a prisoner in tow before.”
I shrug my shoulders, not really knowing what to think.
There’s barely anyone awake at this time of night, and the people who are awake are either playing cards or giggling hysterically over God-knows-what at the wooden tables in the middle of the dimly-lit lobby.
“Do you think we should tell anyone?” Kismet says, eyeing the people in the lobby.
“No, Benedict can take care of himself.” The numerous scars and bruises I have all over my body from our training sessions with him is proof enough of that.
“But won’t our superiors enquire about why the criminal we were sent out to capture is not in the dungeon?”
“If they do, we tell them the truth.” I say simply. “Beatrice will back us up, she issued the Mission order.” I show her the crumpled piece of paper with the word ‘Mission’ at the header that ultimately led to Kismet’s kill.
“Won’t that get Benedict in trouble?”
“Kismet, it’s late.” I say, containing the urge to sigh in frustration. “We’ve had a busy night and I’m too tired to worry about my irresponsible, pothead friend, okay?”
Kismet looks at me with a certain chilliness, but then nods.
We walk toward our room, pulling the sheet to the side and entering the near-total darkness of our quarters. Kismet throws herself on the bed, which is only a mattress lying on top of a rectangular podium made of clay.
I can hear her shuffling as she takes off her clothes and shoes and throws them on the floor. I also take off mine and set them on top of two suitcases we own—which is the only closet space we have—and then lie down beside her.
“Was he guilty?” I whisper.
Kismet sighs. “What do you think?”
“That man in the dungeons looked me in the eye.” I answer. “In the eye… and all I saw was fear.”
Kismet stiffens beside me. “You should know better than to judge people by their eyes.”
“Just tell me, Kismet.”
“What was I supposed to do, Daniel?” She finally snaps. “Faint into a coma?”
“Of course not, Kis,” I say. “But if that loony one-eyed son of a bitch Bob made a mistake, we have to take it to our superiors. If Bob and Dicky choose not to respect the rules, we have to do something about it.”
“He was guilty, Daniel.” Kismet says flatly. “Nobody who’s innocent tastes that good.”
My breath falters. “How…good?”
She waits a moment. “It felt like biting into a piece of rich chocolate cake infused with heroin.”
I whistle lowly. “Jesus.”
“Yeah…” She says, sighing.
I find myself relieved. Slowly, the confusion weighing on me starts to dissipate. He was guilty. We’d done nothing wrong. After all the commotion, I can’t even think about the Immortal we just killed, or about Benedict. I can’t even think about anything, really. I hadn’t realized how tense I was until I finally allow myself to relax and melt into our old, stinky mattress.
“Gosh, we smell.” I say, sighing deeply. “We need to take a long, hot bath tomorrow.”
“Whatever.” Kismet chuckles. “You know what you should take up with our superiors, now that you’re so eager to do that?”
“What?”
“Our living conditions.” She says. “I don’t understand why we can’t live among humans. Sun-Children in other countries do. I mean, Agartha is the Capital of our people. I know it’s the symbol of our Strength, Secrecy, and Unity and all that crap, but we’re living like moles.”
Strength, Secrecy, and Unity. The three supposed virtues of our people. I turn my head and strain to look at Kismet’s face in the dark. I can see the faint glimmer of my eyes on hers, reflecting back at me. “Remember when we were first recruited into the tribe?” I ask her under my breath.
Kismet smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “You mean kidnapped from our families when we were only kids and indoctrinated into the system?”
I laugh. “Yeah.” It’s not the first time we’ve discussed this. She may speak like she resents it, but I know her better than that. Kismet loves what we do. She believes in it more than anybody.
“I remember.” Kismet yawns and scoots closer to me. I can feel her breath on mine. “I remember how we were drilled for days about the importance of our powers—how the Sun-Children exist to help humanity, how we’re part of a chosen few and we have to live with the rest of our kind, leaving everything we had known up to that point behind.”
“Didn’t you ever think of escaping?” I ask, voice low.
She’s quiet for a moment. “Why are you asking me this now?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I thought about it a lot when I first came here and still missed my family. Sometimes I still daydream about what it would be like to have a normal life…” I say, trailing off.
Kismet stays silent. “This is where we belong.” She says after a while.
I put my arm around her and draw her closer. “I belong with you.” I kiss her soft, moist lips. Soon, we lose ourselves to each other, forgetting everything but the union of our bodies, darkness enveloping us completely.
I wake up to the same darkness that I had fallen asleep in, with the sound of the Morning Horn resounding throughout Agartha, like it does every day at 10 a.m. It echoes off the walls and reaches every corner, no matter how deep or hidden.
“Stupid magical horn.” I murmur, covering my ears.
“Show more respect.” Kismet says, chuckling. “It was forged by seers a century ago and can only be heard by Sun-Children’s ears.”
“Yeah, fascinating.” I say, rolling my eyes in the darkness.
Kismet gets up from the bed and fumbles toward our suitcase. She takes out a robe and throws it at me, taking another one out and putting it on. I rub my e
yes and take the robe, standing up and wrapping it around me. We pull the sheets at the entrance aside and take a lantern, walking in silence and in semi-darkness. I scan the crowd surrounding us.
“He’s not here.” Kismet says, her eyebrows scrunched together in concern.
“Who knows what he did while he was high…” I say as a joke, but I’m starting to worry, too.
We climb up a long, spiraling staircase and reach the common baths, a large circular hall with a steaming saltwater pool in the middle. Men, women, and children alike take their daily bath in this pool. I remember how uncomfortable I had been with this when I first came to Agartha. Back then, it was the first time I had seen a woman’s naked body. Any naked body, in fact, that wasn’t my own.
Now I barely even notice.
Kismet and I take off our robes and wade into the warm, soothing water. She dives down and picks up scoops of mineral salts from the bottom of the pool, giving a handful to me. We scrub our bodies and scalps with the salts, cleaning ourselves of any dirt or grime we carry from yesterday. I notice how Kismet’s short hair stands in contrast with everyone else’s. Sun-Children usually have brown or black hair and eyes. It’s one of the traits that set us apart as a species, or whatever we are.
Kismet, however, has gleaming amber eyes and shiny red hair. It makes her more beautiful than the rest of us. Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks so. I catch other guys peeking at her out of the corner of their eyes, and I control the urge to call them out and start some shit.
At least no one is straight-out staring at her, because then I would have to beat them up.
“What?” She says when she notices me staring at her.
“Nothing,” I reply, smiling. “You’re beautiful, that’s all.”
“You’re not so bad yourself.” She says, grinning. Then she peers at my head, and her smile vanishes. “I hadn’t noticed that before. She touches the gash in my head where I’d hit it on the rock last night, and I wince. “Does it hurt?”
“A little,” I say, lying. “We heal fast, don’t worry about it.” I bring heaps of water over my head with my hands, washing any remaining blood off my strands of brown hair. I touch the gash on my head softly… small and shawllow, I’ll be all right.
I venture a little peck at Kismet’s lips, even though public displays of affection are forbidden in our tribe.
“Daniel!” Her eyes widen in surprise and disapproval, but then she laughs playfully and throws water at my face. “Done with your macho display of dominance?”
“Yeah,” I say, and she giggles.
We finish bathing and get out of the pool, pulling our robes tight around us and walking back to our room to change. Kismet nudges me in the shoulder as we’re walking up a flight of stairs. I look at her, and she points at Beatrice, the seer who gave us our Healing Mission last night. She’s walking a few paces ahead of us, returning from the common bath as well.
“Beatrice.” I say, and she turns around and smiles at us.
“Oh, hello, Daniel. Kismet.” She gives us a little bow.
“Beatrice, we need to ask you something.” I pull her into a corner, and Kismet follows us.
“Is something wrong?” She says. “Did you find the sick girl all right last night? Don’t tell me I got this vision wrong.”
“What? No, it’s fine.” I say. “Kismet healed her.”
“Oh, thank the heavens.” She sighs.
Beatrice is a seer, but she isn’t part of our tribe. She just works for us. We call seers the women employed by our superiors to use secret and mysterious arts in order to see into the future and predict which criminals we should Capture, which healing Missions to undertake, and the location of new Sun-Children to recruit, albeit somewhat inaccurately at times. But really, the seers are more than just that. They’re witches.
“I don’t need to tell you that some of my powers have been a little… off-key lately,” Beatrice says.
“Really?” I say, swallowing. “I hadn’t noticed.”
Kismet shakes her head violently. “Not at all!”
She stares at us stonily. “Hilda’s and Alice’s powers have been a little off-key lately too…”
“Hey, what’s going on over there?” Someone suddenly says from behind us.
I sigh before answering. “Hello, Henrick.”
Henrick breaks out from the crowd that’s walking up and down the stairs to join us in the corner. I look down when I notice that his nose is red and inflamed from my punch yesterday, feeling ashamed.
“Beatrice, we want to ask you something.” I say. “It’s about Benedict.”
Beatrice nods and closes her eyes for a moment before opening them again. “So you’ve heard.”
“No.” I say, feeling my stomach drop. “We haven’t.”
“Beatrice, what happened?” Kismet says, the alarm noticeable in her voice.
“Oh, it’s just terrible.” She puts her face in her hands. “He killed an innocent person out in the open.”
An icy coldness seeps into me.
“What?” Kismet whispers.
“It was an accident, of course.” She says.
“How could it have been an accident?” I say, my voice rising involuntarily. Kismet shushes me.
“Last night, he was sent on a Mission.” Beatrice says. “When he got back, I decided to send him out again to relieve you two from your Capture and give you the directions to your Mission, as you well know.” She fiddles with her fingers.
“The little girl you sent us to heal was on the verge of death.” Kismet says. “We got there just in time. If it weren’t for your proficiency, she would have died.”
Beatrice looks at Kismet and nods. “I knew you two would probably Capture the criminal fairly quickly, so I didn’t want to waste any time. I sent Benedict to you before he could go to the dungeons and replenish his forces after the healing.” She shakes her head. “It was stupid.”
“Benedict is one of the strongest healers we have.” I say. “It usually takes days for something to take a toll on his life-force.”
Beatrice’s lips tremble. “I thought he could handle it.” She says, turning to Kismet. Her shoulders start shaking, and tears gather around the corner of her eyes. “I’m going to get killed, aren’t I?”
“Jesus...” Henrick says.
I look around to face him. “I’d forgotten you were there.”
He murmurs something unintelligible under his breath. Kismet hugs Beatrice, and starts whispering something in her ear that I can’t make out. I turn to face Henrick and run a hand through my hair, thinking.
Benedict didn’t look the least bit weak when he came to us last night, and never in a million years would he have let the criminal escape. He taught me all I know about fighting. There’s no way in hell he would have let the criminal escape, even if he was hungering, which I highly doubt. And even if he was, why didn’t he just take the criminal’s life? Better that than an innocent. He’s not the type to hesitate.
Kismet and Beatrice break away, and she seems comforted, but her eyes are still watery.
“How’s he doing?” I ask Beatrice.
“Not well.” She admits. “He was punished for his weakness, of course. I’ve heard it’s taken a toll on him.”
“How was he punished?” I ask, not really sure I want to hear the answer to that.
“Solitary.” She says. “With chains, of course, so he can’t escape.” She adds as an afterthought.
“Ah.” I gulp. I’ve never been punished with solitary, but I know how it is. They lock you up in a deep, cold cell way down in the earth for days at a time, without food or water or company. People have been driven mad in solitary. We stand in silence for a moment, and I can hear my heart beating inside my chest.
“We’ve got to go to breakfast.” Henrick says, breaking the silence.
“Why don’t you go on ahead, Henrick?” Kismet says, a little tartly. “We’ll catch up with you later.”
“All right, w
hatever.” He answers, walking on ahead of us.
I debate with myself before finally deciding to speak up. “Did our superiors buy that story you just fed us?” I say, facing Beatrice.
Kismet stares at me in alarm. Beatrice’s eyes narrow, but then her mouth curls up in a smile. “Yes, Sun-Child.” She says, very low. “They did, and if you know what’s best for you, you would too.”
I grin. “Yes, ma’am.” I expected that answer from her, and since I’m not in a mood to challenge anyone this morning and Kismet is nervous, I let it go. Besides, I know I’ll get to the bottom of this.
Somehow.
We walk down the stairs in single file. “Well, I suppose I should dress and be off to breakfast.” Beatrice says lightly, as if she hadn’t just threatened me after I called her bluff. That’s how I know I’m in the clear… angering a witch is dangerous business, or so they say.
“I wonder what succulent plate they have prepared for us this morning.” I say to her. Beatrice smiles, then takes a left turn into a dark hallway that leads to the witches’ chambers. We continue walking in silence until we reach the dormitories and enter our room.
“Don’t trouble yourself with all this, Daniel.” Kismet says once we’re inside.
I take off my robe and look for clean clothes inside our suitcase. “You mean that load of bullshit Beatrice just fed us about Benedict killing an innocent?”
Kismet lays down on the bed and looks up at the ceiling. “I guess.”
“Why do you say so?”
“I know you care about him very much.” Kismet gives me a tender, pitying smile, which only aggravates me further.
“Don’t do that, Kismet.” I say. “Just answer me this. Why should I turn a blind eye to what we both know is obviously a lie? And why would Beatrice go to such lengths to conceal the truth?”
Kismet sighs. She puts an arm around my shoulder, and I stop rummaging through the suitcase for a moment. “I’m not saying that I don’t care about Benedict, but you know our duties as a people. We’re supposed to protect the innocent and get rid of the evil, and when someone messes up like this—”
I shrug her hand off my shoulder. “Don’t tell me you actually believe he did it.”
The Sun Child (The Sun Child Saga Book 1) Page 3
