“I was finally captured outside Nexter. I had hoped to gain transport to Kand there, but I was hungry and without money. It was a low level for a prince to stoop, but I took bread from a market and was spotted by a child. When the guard apprehended me, they believed the child’s words but did not believe I was any kind of royalty. So it is that I have been reduced, from the possibility of leading the greatest people of our nation, to a fool on the run for nothing more than trying to keep himself from starving.”
“And so they put you on a ship with the other Kandish prisoners?”
“Yes,” Lian gives a humble nod. “Placed amongst the very worst sample of my kin, who know nothing of truly bettering our nation. I could not bear their company, to see men of such true blood reduced to their needless violence. They don’t know what they are doing, except getting themselves killed. So you see, all I wish for is to head home, now. It is time I accepted my responsibility in the Fretop court, at whatever cost. I know now you are an Estalian, but surely you see I have no quarrel with you.”
“I wasn’t aware that Kand was in such a state of turmoil,” Marquos notes. “I understand that tribes have emerged everywhere, we have them in Estal too, but they aren’t violent. They are just communities.”
“My friend you are happily ignorant of our plight,” Lian says. “Ask any Kand and they will tell you, everyone thinks some leadership of the scale of the Estalian Metropolis is possible, and they are fighting for it.”
“And the Dread Clan, and the Gentar, they’re…?”
“The larger tribes. The Dreads are very powerful; they have supporters even here, in Estalia. They are ruthless, though, and their answer to everything is mindless slaughter. The Gentar are not much better.”
“And you belong to the Fretops.”
“That is right.”
“Can I be honest with you?”
“Of course, I told you that we revere honesty above-”
“It sounds like a load of nonsense to me.”
Lian’s face goes pale, his voice weakening, “But it’s real. It is not your nation, or your people, so no one tells you.”
“Well, I don’t imagine anyone would care if they did tell us,” Marquos shrugs, “If all that is true, it sounds like you’ve created a world of problems for yourselves. What sort of people worry about the bloodline of some High Breath clan or your correspondence with foreign spies, when there’s barely enough sunlight to grow crops and everyone is migrating so frequently that the concept of a nation is barely even recognisable? I’ve been all over, and I know we have something resembling a working empire with Estalia, but let’s not kid ourselves it’s just a name we give it.”
The Kand screws up his face in irritation and rises to his feet. He points a shaking hand at Marquos but the words he has to say catch in his throat. He turns away and rushes through the door, up to the deck. Marquos stares after him with some surprise but does not follow, and a moment later Lian re-emerges, snarling, “I shouldn’t expect you to understand, you live in a country strong enough to defend itself. Your people are not at war constantly, with oppressors, with each other.”
“Hey,” Marquos rises to his feet, “Everyone’s got problems. The Metropolis is hardly a safe-haven. Kids are killing each other down there. Accidents in the Meth Fields and Thesteran probably cost more lives than all your petty wars. The difference is we’re trying to make do with what we’ve got, rather than fighting each other pretending there’s some war we can win that’ll end all our problems.”
“Don’t speak such filth. Your people are not oppressed-”
“I don’t have a people. No one does,” Marquos puts a hand to his head in frustration. “Come on, the Empire is as much a myth as your Dread Clan and Gentars. The Mines, the Border Guard, they’re not even being governed anymore. I’ve seen how things run; it’s a massive network of individual traders who happen to work in the same field. They just exist supporting themselves. No one is telling anyone what to do, it’s just a bunch of people doing the same job, wearing the same clothes.”
Lian stands still, at a loss. His lower lip quivers, his shoulders slump. Marquos gives him an encouraging smile, stepping forward and putting a hand on his arm. He leads him back down the boat, back to his seat, saying “It’s not my concern, though. I’ll take you north, if that’s what you’re after.”
“I…I don’t know…”
“Don’t listen to me, look, just relax,” Marquos turns to his kitchenette and fills his kettle-pan from the rattling tap. “What do I know. If fighting’s what you want to do, then do it. You drink chocolate?”
The Kand nods. He clears his throat and looks up to Marquos again, like a punished child. The pilot starts heating the kettle pan over his gas-fire hob. Lian says “The people of Kand are suffering, though.”
“Just like everyone else.”
“Not here. I’ve seen Estalian towns, with buildings intact. Engines running, streets lit and food available. My people do not have any of that.”
“The problem isn’t one you can fight your way out of,” Marquos tells him. “If you find anywhere in Estalia like that, I can guarantee that half the population came from towns that were falling apart.”
“Fretop is a beautiful area, though. It’s our area.”
“It’s not beautiful if people have to kill and die for it.”
“You shouldn’t speak so lightly of our struggle. So many have lost their lives to these wars. Not everyone is so uncaring as you.”
“I do care,” Marquos sighs, pouring out the kettle into three metal mugs. “I just find the idea of leadership a little redundant these days.”
“You wouldn’t if you were Kandish.”
“I think I would,” Marquos hands one of the mugs over to Lian, who takes it graciously and blows on the drifting steam. Marquos says, “But I am sorry for offending you. I can see you’re not a violent man, so you are welcome on my boat. Accept the ride without complaint and don’t give me reason for complaint myself and we’ll get on just fine.”
“I would be very thankful.”
“Try and keep all this talk of war and suffering away from Red, though.”
“Okay.”
“Good. We’ll make a bit more ground before settling for the night; you can wash up and I’ll fix us some food in a bit.”
Marquos moves past the Kand towards his bedroom, carrying the other two mugs. He pauses and turns back to Lian, saying “You’ve got to admit, though, Gentars? That’s a pretty stupid name.”
This gains a smile from the Kand, who nods. He answers, “I guess so.”
9
The weather turns that night, with rain beating upon the Hypnagogia in such a relentless assault that it seems to scream an omen. They had come a little way up the canal before stopping for food, which Marquos prepared and the Kand consumed as though he had not eaten for moons. As the echo of raindrops fill the boat, Red hugs onto Marquos. They sit drinking more hot drinks with their new passenger, whilst Marquos stares at Lian carefully. With his place on the boat secured, the Kand has gone quiet, though he still cannot seem to sit still.
“So glad,” he mutters, “So glad that you let me here, with this weather bearing down on us.”
“It’s nothing,” Marquos murmurs back.
“Sorry you couldn’t go further. You could’ve gone further without me, before the rain came.”
“It’s nothing,” Marquos repeats.
“It’s devilish rain,” Lian shakes his head, looking up around him at the ceiling as though he can see the water dropping on them.
“It’s only water,” Marquos tells him. “We’re perfectly safe in here.”
The Kand has panic in his eyes, though, which Marquos recognises as a learned fear. A crack of thunder sounds above and the Kand flinches. Red holds onto Marquos tighter. He rubs her, whispering, “It’s fine, honey. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Lian gives him a frightened look of disagreement, but Marquos shoots him a warning gl
are.
“When will it stop?” Red asks quietly.
“It doesn’t have to,” Marquos tells her. “The whole world could flood and we would be safe on this boat.”
“I don’t want the whole world to flood!” Red protests.
“Why not? If there was water everywhere, we would be able to float forever, anywhere we wanted. There wouldn’t be as many clouds in the sky, you’d be able to see the stars everywhere you went, the sun would shine brighter. And it would wash everything clean, you know? Imagine the towers of the Metropolis, all shining clean, so you could see reflections in them. Just you wait and see how the Hypno looks in the morning, it’ll be beautiful.”
“I’m still scared,” Red whimpers. “Everyone else isn’t on boats. What about mummy and daddy and what about Nicky?”
“Nicky?” Marquos holds back a laugh, touched that his friend made it into the young one’s concerns. “They would find their own boats. Nicky can swim very well, we’d go back and find her, and she’d come with us. And we’d travel so much faster, because nothing would get in our way, and we wouldn’t need locks.”
“What about the cats?”
“The cats?”
“The cats, what would happen to them? Cats don’t like the water.”
“The cats would climb, and live above the water, in the trees and towers that still stand above it. Then they would start liking the water, too. Everything would learn to like the water. It’s what we’re all made of, you know?”
Red screws up her face at this, snorting, “Are not.”
“We sure are. Most of this world is water, so the more there is, the better it is for us. If the world flooded, we’d all be in our element.”
“What’s an element?”
“It’s…” Marquos pauses, “It’s where we belong.”
“You didn’t know where you belong.”
“Not just me,” he rubs her again, “Everyone. It’s what we are. Water is what makes our world alive, honey. Like how all the grass and trees are along the waterways and nowhere else.”
“Is an element like an elephant?”
“No,” Marquos laughs, “Not really.”
“I like elephants.”
As the young girl trails off, Marquos looks back over to Lian. The Kand is staring at him with wide eyes, stunned by this brief conversation. Marquos stares back with concern but says nothing. He doesn’t want to probe the meaning of the odd look, not when Red has just been pacified. He merely frowns at Lian and goes back to soothing the girl. Lian is trembling. He tells her, “Best of all, the Mines would flood, and be filled into a beautiful lake, all the suffering washed away.”
It is not long before Red drifts off to sleep, and Marquos carefully carries her to the back of the boat. He returns to the main cabin to find Lian hunched up in his seat, one hand to his face as he gnaws on a fingernail. Lian pauses, his manic eyes staring up at Marquos.
“It’s only rain, Lian,” Marquos says, sitting back down. “Take it easy.”
“I know the rain, I know what it’s like in Estalia, it is safe,” Lian talks quickly, his voice fearful with recollection. “But it is not the same everywhere. In the very north of Kand, such rain swept through towns and drowned hundreds of our people.”
“People from…High Breath?”
Lian nods hurriedly, almost whimpering, “The sun had not shone, there was not enough heat to evaporate the waters, so even for days after the rain stopped the floods did not leave. The rain came again, and the floods worsened. I was there with my people, trying to drain the area, but we had only small pumps, and they were not powerful enough. All we could do in the end was to try and escort others to safety. It was all we could do and it was not enough.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. We suffered floods in Estal too, though.”
“You said before...you were in the Mines? What were they like? Tell me about the Mines.”
“Okay,” Marquos answers slowly, seeing that the Kand is looking for some kind of distraction. He starts to describe the Mines and how he came to be there, going into all the detail he can recall, trying to remind himself of the specifics of his situation as much as inform the Kand, starting with the Metropolis.
Marquos has spent a lot of time in the Metropolis, where there is always work for a scavenger or a transporter, but he despises the place more than anywhere. For all its people, the Metropolis is an unfriendly hub, where casual talk is considered suspicious. Places to drink and activities to forget the sorrows of the world are plentiful; Marquos spent many days there trying to do exactly that, at great expense. They were hollow pleasures when completed, though.
The Mines took every excess and extravagance of the Metropolis and turned them into an industrial complex second to none. They stretch far out of the city, into catacombs deep enough to fit a whole other civilisation. Hundreds of kilometres of railway track and pulley systems keep the vast plant moving at a hectic rate, and fires burning all hours of the day make it one of the most vibrantly lit places in the known world. But it is also a pit of despair, populated by frail workers with little time to rest or even eat. For all the light they dwell in, few get a chance to venture out and see the light of day. The air is thick with drilled out dust, smoke and steam. There are too many people for the tools provided, most limited to primitive devices whilst the advanced mechanics are reserved for use in the Mine Guard’s personal projects.
A traveller spoke very well of the Mines whilst Marquos was piloting him across the channel from Afta to Estalia. He spoke of the wealth of the Mines and the easy work there, making it sound like a luxury job for any transporter. Marquos bought into it, imagining himself earning enough chips to let him travel unhindered into his twilight years. Soon his days were spent navigating the catacombs of the Mines; they had aqueducts as well as their rail tracks, and boats like his were vital in moving both product and people. He could spend whole days inside the Mines without seeing the clouds of the sky, a maddening thought from the outset. Fortunately, his job extended to moving through the city, as a taxi for the few lucky workers who had homes outside the catacombs, and as a cargo ship for the fuel that needed transporting to the rest of the Empire.
Even without the children, it was a miserable existence, but when they started boarding his boat by the dozen, worn and beaten helpless young souls, it became even darker. He was drinking more to try and make the memories of his day go away. For the most part, the children were kept silent by the abrasive guards, who were always present shoving and swatting and swearing at their charges. Still, he could not help but become familiar with a few of them.
Lian looks at him without really listening, nervously rocking back and forth. The Kand screws his eyes shut and starts muttering under his breath. Marquos merely stares back at him, without judgement, knowing that the next stage of his tale isn’t fit for a man who isn’t concentrating. He rises to his feet and says “I’m going to turn in. You can sleep here. Do try and sleep, you look like you need it. I’ll be up to move off again as soon as the rain stops, there’s no sense in wasting time.”
Lian keeps nodding as Marquos leaves the room.
10
The boat creaks under the pressure of footfalls, and Marquos immediately leaps from his bed to his feet. He pricks his ears as Red scrambles across the bed, startled, and he moves to the door. He whispers, “Stay here, honey.”
“Is that Mr Kand?” Red asks quietly, but Marquos shakes his head. He grabs a hammer and slips out into the main cabin. The pilot immediately freezes, stood opposite a larger man who looms over Lian with fists clenched. This newcomer has a face dotted with scars, his hair shaved clean and his eyes darkly glaring as he drips rainwater onto the floor. There are cuts across his head, recently dried, and his large nose is flat as Retical described. Lian cowers away from him, crying “My friend, my friend, he just came in, I didn’t know what to do!”
“Who are you?” Marquos growls, defensively holding the hammer up. The large man replies in a lo
w voice, his rumbling accent instantly recognisable as Kand.
“Now calm down, boy, there’s no need for violence. I already see you’re sympathetic to our people.”
“Not to people who come on my boat uninvited, I’m not.”
“There’s no need to get tough with me, we all know it’s your boat and I ain’t contesting that. I just need a ride is all.”
“It’s a stretch to have two men on this boat, it certainly won’t take three.”
“Come now, we’re all on it right now and there ain’t no harm to it.”
“This isn’t a debate. Back off right now, or I’ll make you.”
“Maybe you will,” the stranger says calmly as Marquos takes a slight step forward, “Maybe you get to lay a beating on me, but then maybe you don’t and maybe I lay the beating on you instead. Then what happens? Then we can’t be friends, can we? How about we hold off on the proving which one of us is the harder nail and just choose to get along?”
“How about we don’t?” Marquos snarls and surges forwards, raising the hammer. As he does, Lian jumps between the two men and blocks Marquos’ path, crying “Stop, please! I beg you! People will hear! They will come looking for us! I can’t risk this!”
“Marq?” Red’s voice comes from behind and Marquos turns to see her stood in the doorway, looking frightened.
“I don’t mean anyone no harm,” the newcomer says. “Would be a shame to upset the little one and all.”
“Please, Marquos,” Lian whispers. “At least hear him out.”
“It’s okay, honey,” Marquos says to Red, “It’s okay.”
“Marquos?” the stranger laughs a hearty laugh, “I once knew a man named Marquos. He was one of the toughest sons of Hrute I ever knew. I never thought I’d hear that name again.”
Marquos glowers at him, lowering the tool, and says “You look about right for the man Commander Retical described to me.”
“I’d imagine I do, if there was one person aboard that boat the good Commander wanted to find it’d be me,” the stranger replies unabashed. “My name is Goreth, and I’m a general in the armies of Kand. Second only to the Highness herself.”
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