The Jobs Master flicked through some pages, his shaking finger landing on a line a few pages from the back.
“Read it out loud,” said Aarow.
“Waste management.” His voice was low, almost a whisper. But the room had no trouble hearing him and a murmur of amusement rippled from person to person.
“The Princess would like to know why you assigned this job to Azrael,” said Aarow.
“There was a vacancy,” the Jobs Master said. “It’s an important job. Someone has to do it.”
“Even a girl, barely strong enough to lift a bucket?” asked Rani. “A girl who was recovering from a violation at the hands of your colleagues and was possibly with child?”
The man swallowed, able to see where this was heading.
“I believe there’s a vacancy for this job now,” said Aarow, saving Rani the pain. “Do you have any suggestions as to who can fill it?”
“Me,” whispered the man, with his head down.
“Excellent!” said Aarow’s father, taking charge once more. “We have a volunteer. Congratulations on your new job. Give our new waste worker an applause.”
The room broke into a series of claps and cheers, none louder than Rani and Aarow. This seemed a fair punishment.
“Next up is the Registrar,” said his father.
The Emperor rose from his chair and cleared his throat. “Please Colonel, would you let me deal with the Registrar?”
“I don’t see why not,” said the Colonel. “What did you have in mind?”
“I was thinking he could set out his books in the Conception Center and work with the people to unite them with their families. It’s a long and tedious job, and nobody knows how to read the books like he does. That will be punishment enough for now.”
Aarow watched his father scratch his chin while he considered this request. Clearly there was more behind this. It seemed extremely lenient. What was it? Had some kind of deal been struck between these two men?
“Very well,” said Aarow’s father. “As you wish. He can get started immediately.”
The Registrar stood.
“Thank you,” he said, scuttling from the room before anybody changed their mind.
“We might have a chat about this later,” the Colonel said, smiling at the Emperor.
“Of course.” The Emperor dropped his head in a bow. “Thank you for trusting me.”
“Now, Princess,” said his father, directing his gaze at Rani. “You did so well with the Jobs Master, how about you try again? Next up is our Chairman. I believe you’ve already had some ideas about what we can do with him.”
“That’s right,” said Rani, seeming far less confident than she had only moments ago. This vile man may not have laid a hand on her, but clearly the threat of it had been enough to leave her feeling a certain level of trauma.
Aarow looked at the Chairman, studying him up close for the first time. He was an awful looking man, with narrow eyes, a hooked nose and long fingers that he seemed to like rubbing together. But it wasn’t so much how he looked. It was the vile aura that swam around him. The Healers back in the Colony would have a hard time balancing the sort of energy he threw out. He doubted they’d even bother trying.
Aarow took in a breath and let it go, trying to expel some of his anger with it. But there was far too much of it trapped inside.
“Let the Chairman speak first,” said Rani, refusing to look at the man who’d caused her such pain. “I want to hear where he stands now.”
The Chairman stood with a straight back and clasped his hands in front of him as he composed himself. “I’m not going to grovel like the rest of the spineless fools here at the table.”
“Sit down,” said Aarow’s father.
“Don’t tell me what to do.” The Chairman’s eyes burned with defiance.
Aarow and his father went to the Chairman and stood either side of him, towering over this pathetic excuse of a man.
“Sit down!” the Colonel said, more loudly this time.
“I will not.” The Chairman lifted his chin, as if that could make him taller.
“Sit. Down.” This time it wasn’t the volume of the Colonel’s voice that made him a force not to mess with, it was his tone.
The Chairman sat, looking between them both like he could strike them down with the poison in his eyes.
“What do you have to say?” Aarow’s father asked.
“She wanted me,” the Chairman said, nodding in Rani’s direction. “I could see it in her eyes whenever she came near. The bitch was practically in heat, panting for me like one of those coyotes on the dunes. I was only doing her a favor by volunteering to sire her child. Give her what she was so desperate for.”
Aarow left the Chairman and went to Rani, putting his arm around her shoulders and pinning her to his side.
“But…” said Rani. “It’s not—”
“Don’t!” Aarow said, cutting off her words. “Don’t say it’s not true. We all know it’s not. You don’t have to defend yourself here. You’re not the one on trial.”
“He must be released,” said Aarow, letting go of Rani and moving toward the human who redefined the feeling of hate.
His father motioned for Aarow to stay back. “You look after Rani. We’ll sentence the rest of the Board later. I’m going to release this piece of shit myself.”
THE CHAIRMAN
THE AFTER
The Chairman struggled against the Coward who was leading him into the desert. It was the tall man, the one who called himself the Colonel. But the Chairman refused to give him such a title. He was the Coward to him.
“Quit your struggling,” the Coward said, pushing him forward.
The Chairman felt his ankle twist and he stumbled, lifted back to his feet by his hands that were bound behind his back. Pain shot up his arms to mingle with the throbbing in his ankle.
“This is far enough,” said the Chairman. “We never release people further out than this.”
“You had no fear of them returning, did you?” The Coward pushed him forward again. “How do we know you won’t try to find your way back? Rats always remember where they found their last crumb.”
How dare this man compare him to a rodent! He had no idea who he was dealing with. He didn’t voice his complaint, concentrating instead on taking the steps being forced upon him without inflicting further pain. His ankle burned with every step.
Despite the pain, he still couldn’t bring himself to feel sorry for what he’d said. He’d spoken the truth. The Princess had wanted him. The only thing he was sorry for was that he hadn’t seen this invasion coming in time to stop it. Taavi had tried to warn them, although sadly his shouts had come too late.
The Coward walked him further still, his twisted ankle buckling under his weight.
“Enough!” cried the Chairman, borrowing the word the people in the Round had used to cry for freedom and hoping this would hit home with the Coward. Did he have no mercy?
The Coward tensed at the word and threw him to the ground. The Chairman felt a snap in his other ankle as the pain intensified beyond anything he’d felt before.
“You broke my ankle!” he screamed. “What hope do I have out here now?”
Although, he already knew he had no hope. He was never going to survive the desert. All those times he’d had people released, he’d never imagined the reality of it would be quite so hot, so painful, so…frightening.
“Well, you did say enough,” said the Coward, scratching his beard.
The Chairman pulled his ankle toward him and rubbed it as he watched the Coward take a long swig of water from the skin he carried around his neck. The pain in his broken ankle made his twisted one feel like nothing. He was unable to take another step.
“Water,” the Chairman said, the thirst burning his throat far worse than the humiliation of having to ask for such a basic need.
“I don’t think so,” the Coward said. “Did you send the people you released out here with water? I’
d like this to be an authentic experience for you.”
“What will happen to the other Board members?” the Chairman asked, wondering if maybe he could find one of them out here and they could carry him to the river.
“We’ll figure that out when I return,” said the Coward. “Princess Rani will continue to assist me. You do know it’s because of you that she ran into the desert in the first place, don’t you?”
The Chairman groaned, trying to block out the relentless onslaught of words from the Coward. The Princess would’ve been lucky to have had her heir sired by him. She’d run away because she’d been foolish, not because of him.
“I know you’re listening to me,” said the Coward, taking another sip of his water, letting a few drops spill carelessly down his chin. “The Princess was so repulsed by the idea of you going anywhere near her, that she decided she’d rather take her chances out here. Do you think that was fair?”
The Chairman tucked his face into his knees, refusing to answer.
“Sharma ran too,” said the Coward. “All she wanted was the right to love her own children. Not too much of a request, don’t you think?”
He waited for what he knew would surely be another question.
“And Azrael. I don’t think you knew her, though. She was just one of the many faceless women whose dignity your cruel laws stole. And to make it worse, she was given a job that no young girl should have to do, carrying buckets of your waste out here to rot. She took her chances, too. What chance do you think you have out here?”
“You won’t leave me out here,” the Chairman sneered. “You’re all about peace and safety or whatever rubbish you told the people in the Round. How will they trust you if they see you inflicting the same punishments that you claim to be opposed to? You said it yourself. Cruelty can’t replace cruelty.”
“That’s an excellent point,” said the Coward, adjusting his scarf to cover the lower half of his face. “Which is why I don’t think I’ll tell the people about this.”
He turned his back and walked away, calling the Chairman’s bluff.
“Get back here!” the Chairman cried, rising to his knees.
Each step the Coward took away from him created just a little more doubt in his mind. The Coward didn’t slow his pace or turn to see if he was following. He knew he couldn’t with one ankle broken, the other twisted and a thirst the size of the desert itself.
“Okay!” he shouted, trying to project his voice across the sand to reach the Coward’s ears. “I’m sorry! I made a mistake. Don’t leave me out here! Please! I beg for mercy.”
But the Coward continued on and soon he was a small dot on the horizon, the Chairman’s hope diminishing the smaller the dot became. Then the dot dipped below the crest of a dune and vanished.
That was when he knew for certain that he’d soon be dead. He’d dedicated his life to serving his kingdom and this was the thanks he got.
The wind picked up its pace, as if keen to hurry him to his demise. Sand found its way between the folds of his scarf and scratched at his skin.
“You coward!” he called, collapsing back on the harsh red sand, his voice weakening as the beat of his heart picked up.
He looked to the sky and felt himself falling toward it, hurtling to the clouds and spinning back to earth with a crash.
He was just dizzy. That was all. Not dying. Just dizzy.
A great injustice had been inflicted upon him today, but someone would come and save him. Soon. The Coward wouldn’t leave him out here.
The Chairman closed his eyes and time passed. So much time. When he finally found the strength to open his eyes again, he felt himself fly to the clouds once more. Only this time when he crashed back, he sank beneath the sand and down, down, down into a place so hot it made the desert feel like ice.
THE COLONEL
THE AFTER
The Colonel had thought leaving the Chairman in the desert would be a pleasure. The truth was that he took very little joy from it. His job was to rescue people, not abandon them when they begged for mercy.
But it had to be done. Once in the Colony, a lizard had found its way into his quarters. Its back had been broken and it was dragging its hind legs like a weight. He’d had to crush it under his shoe to put an end to its misery.
The Chairman was that rat, only it was his soul that was broken instead of his spine. There was no hope of rehabilitation. His time in The Sands of Naar was over. Perhaps he should’ve crushed the Chairman’s skull like he had with the lizard and gotten it over with quickly? However, this seemed too kind and would rob the Chairman of the chance to repent. He needed to understand the gravity of what he’d done to all those people in the only way possible, which was to live the same pain himself.
This was why the Colonel had continued to push his footsteps forward, leading him back to the Capital when all he wanted to do was go home to the peaceful life his ancestors created in the Colony. To his wife and daughter.
He wrapped his scarf around his face, blinking as a gust of wind sent red grains of sand into his eyes, and he reminded himself why the Capital needed him. The people in there had never had a wife or daughter, forced to live a solitary life. It was no wonder they all died so young. What did they have to live for?
But he had more than just a wife and daughter. He had his people. And he had his son.
All Aarow had to do to earn his love was be born. Respect was harder won than love, and over the years Aarow had managed to earn that, too. He had so many good qualities, but the one the Colonel admired most of all was how sure of himself Aarow was. He never doubted himself when heading into the desert to rescue a reborn. He never doubted the Colony’s success invading the Capital. And he could see the gleam in his son’s eyes when he looked at the Princess, never doubting that she’d be a part of his future, even if he didn’t quite know how to go about that.
And this was why he hadn’t wanted Aarow to release the Chairman himself. Because there was no task that would make someone question themselves more than leading a man to his death.
There was so much he hadn’t been able to protect Aarow from in life, including having his own mother taken from him at birth. He wanted to protect him from this one thing. He’d been able to repair some of the damage of his mother’s loss by bringing Freya into his life, but once his surety about himself was lost, there was no getting that back. He wanted Aarow to hold onto that for as long as possible.
The Capital came into sight. The ugly stone wall that would maybe be beautiful if it weren’t a symbol of such misery. Perhaps they could make it beautiful again one day.
This was going to be a challenge. The Sands of Naar had always been a kingdom of one city in the middle of a desert. Now it was two. One thriving and one damaged. How were they going to merge these into a coherent whole?
He wasn’t sure yet if the Emperor was a man he could work with to make this happen. There was going to need to be some teamwork here. Not the sort of Board that pretended to work as a team only to serve the evil desires of one man, but the sort where everyone had their say and the true needs of the people were met. So far, the Emperor had shown himself to lack confidence, but his heart seemed pure enough.
He walked through the archway to the Capital, smiling to see people holding hands and bumping shoulders as they walked, free from the threat of death. The Registrar’s books had been made publicly available and citizens were pouring over them as they mapped out their family trees, figuring out who their parents, children, and siblings were. The atmosphere was one of both happy reunion and sadness of lost time.
The Colonel was pleased to let the people revel in their new freedom for a time, but soon some kind of order would need to be established before things got chaotic. Tasks still needed to be done. Blankets still needed to be woven, livestock needed to be fed and waste still needed to be collected. These jobs didn’t go away. But there were better systems to put in place than ones reliant on force and fear. In the Colony, each citizen was rew
arded fairly for the work they did. The jobs nobody wanted were rewarded with more rations until the unwanted became the wanted.
But before the Colonel returned to the Boardroom, he had somewhere else he needed to go first. He needed to see the Registrar’s books for himself. There was one book in particular he needed to look at, dating back many years now.
It was crowded in the Reception Center, with groups of people studying the volumes the Registrar had kept so meticulously. They were laid out in the order they were kept. As people noticed who’d stepped into the room, they moved aside to let him pass.
“I can wait my turn,” he said, not thinking for a moment that his needs were any more important than those who stood before him.
“You have important work to do,” one woman said. “Please go ahead.”
The surrounding people nodded their agreement.
It was true, he supposed. Aarow and the Emperor were waiting for him in the Boardroom.
“I’ll be quick,” he said. “I’m looking for the records from seventeen years ago. Shinings, I mean. Seventeen Shinings.”
A man pointed to a table and a path cleared as he went toward it.
“Please, as you were,” the Colonel said, not wanting the attention being cast upon him. This was a private moment.
A gentle chatter picked up in the room as people continued to flick through the other books. Although most of them were taught basic reading and writing skills in the Growing Center, it seemed these weren’t skills that were practiced and finding the names was difficult for them. The Registrar was indeed working hard to assist them all, as the Emperor had said he’d have to.
“Do you need assistance?” the Registrar asked, approaching him with caution.
The Colonel waved his hand. “No, please help the others. I know what I’m looking for.”
The Registrar stepped away, his brow wrinkled in curiosity.
The Colonel scanned the pages of the book in front of him, looking for one name and one name only.
The Kingdoms of Evernow Box Set Page 60
