Mistress of the Wind (Arucadi Series Book 1)

by E. Rose Sabin

With that harsh pronouncement, he left her to the darkness.

  Sleep was impossible. The cell grew cold, but she couldn’t bear the pain of the blanket against her back. She tried curling up on her side with the blanket draped over her like a tent. That position stretched her lacerated skin and opened the cuts. The discomfort was made worse by a fit of uncontrollable shivering brought on by the cold and a growing fever.

  Her lips were cracked and dry and her throat ached for water. Visions of the Damin River haunted her, its fresh, clean water sparkling in bright morning sunlight as it tumbled through Noster Valley. She tried to reach it, but as she knelt on the bank and dipped her cupped hands toward the water, the river receded; the bank grew into a cliff; the cliff, a steep rock wall. Far below, a tiny silver ribbon wound through a deep canyon, forever out of reach.

  The cliff she stood on became the verge of Nine Falls. The roar of the mighty cataract rumbled through her body as she leaned toward the cool, clear spray. She stretched forward to fill her hands with water, but the water turned to sparks that seared her flesh, and in place of the falls the iron monster charged toward her, its thunder drowning her screams. It bore down on her, clawed its way over her back.

  Someone pounded on the door and shouted, “Quiet down in there.”

  Alair. It must be. Alair, come to punish her for pulling the chain. She tried to run, but mindstealers barred the way. She couldn’t get away, and no one answered her screams. They raked their talons across her back. She fought them, tried to grab something to hang onto so they couldn’t drag her off.

  Her hands wrapped around something. A chain. She wasn’t supposed to touch it.

  “Let go,” Alair was saying.

  Claid’s voice said, “Pull the chain.”

  The chain, long and thick, stretched out of sight above and reached through cold mist into another world. Claid was caught in it, the young lad he’d been when she first saw him. His slender body was wrapped in the chain’s thick coils, suspended above her, out of reach. She stretched her hands toward him.

  “Pull the chain, mistress,” he urged again. “Pull it hard.”

  She grabbed it and tugged with all her strength, but the chain wouldn’t budge. Claid changed, grew, and became a horned being whose hairy body was furred like a goat from the waist down and goat legs ended in cloven hoofs. Yet the bearded face remained Claid’s. “Pull harder,” he said, peering down at her.

  She yanked again. This time the chain moved, the coils unwrapped, and the half-goat, half-man tumbled free. As he fell toward her, he changed form again.

  A newborn infant landed in her arms. She hugged him to her breast and tried to suckle him, but no milk flowed. The innkeeper and Ollie and Jake pried open her arms, snatched the baby, took it from her, while the innkeeper’s wife chanted, “Not yours, not yours,.”

  Lizzie slapped her with a wet towel, and when she opened her mouth to protest, Doctor Sam stuck the neck of a bottle into her mouth. A foul-tasting liquid flowed down her throat. She choked and spat, but couldn’t avoid swallowing much of the vile drink.

  “Good, she’ll sleep,” someone said just before all her tormentors vanished.

  They’ve poisoned me. They’re leaving me alone to die.

  Kyla awoke with a sickening taste in her mouth and a dull ache in her temples. She remembered her visions, but her mind was clear, and she knew she’d been delirious with fever.

  She lay between flannel sheets on a metal cot with a thin mattress that, though flimsy, was an improvement over the filthy mat in the jail cell. The cot was in a narrow room with a wooden floor and frame walls. It must be morning; striped light fell from a barred window above the head of the bed. Bars. She was still in some kind of prison.

  Beside the bed, a small table held a squat brown bottle, a spoon, and an empty water glass. Instead of being poison, the bitter liquid they’d forced her to drink must have been a healing elixir of some kind.

  Her guess was confirmed when a gray-haired woman in a white dress bustled into the room with a pitcher of water. “Well, you are awake,” the woman said. “Doc Sam said you would be, but I didn’t believe him. He said that medicine would bring you around, and for once he knew what he was doing.”

  She poured water into the glass and handed it to Kyla. She drank it down, and the woman refilled the glass. “Doc Sam made ’em bring you here when he saw how bad off you were. He told the sheriff you’d die if they left you in that dirty cell. And if you died, you wouldn’t be able to work off your fine and your debts, would you?”

  “Debts?” Kyla asked weakly. “Where am I?”

  “This is the women’s workhouse, where you’ll work off what you owe for the doctor,” the woman said. “And the medicine. And this room and your board. None of it’s free, you know.”

  Kyla didn’t know. “How am I supposed to pay for it?”

  The woman chuckled. “You never will, to tell the truth. You’re starting too far behind. You’ll be here the rest of your life, just like me. But as soon as you can walk, they’ll expect you to get busy earning your keep.”

  Kyla felt a glimmer of hope. “I’m good at what I do,” she said. “I can pay off my debt. I was the best windspeaker in Noster Valley.”

  The woman gave her an odd look. “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” she said. “Whatever a windspeaker is, that’s not what you’ll be doing here.”

  Kyla remembered how the colorless wind had refused to recognize her or respond to her song. “What will I be doing?”

  “Don’t know. Matron will assign you.”

  “Matron? Who is that?”

  “The boss lady. The head of this workhouse.” Taking the pitcher, the woman left the room. The door’s lock clicked.

  She was better off than she had been in the jail cell, but what kind of prison would a workhouse prove to be?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  WORKHOUSE

  The scabs on Kyla’s back itched beneath the starched white muslin dress the matron made her put on. Its high neck chafed her throat; its long sleeves ended in constricting cuffs around her wrists. Her legs sweated beneath pantaloons, two petticoats, and the dress’s floor-length skirt. The worst part was the tight band that cinched her waist so that she could hardly breathe.

  When she begged for a looser, more comfortable garment, the matron, an imposing woman flinty-eyed and square-jawed, crossed her arms beneath her mountainous bosom and said, “The first thing you’ll learn here is to dress like a decent woman. A loose dress is a sign of loose morals. In this establishment you’ll look like a proper lady no matter how far you are from being one.”

  Kyla tried to proclaim her decency, but the woman plowed over her words.

  “I’ll tolerate no complaining. Especially from a little snip who’s not begun to earn her keep. You should be grateful for a fine dress to cover your nakedness. You came to us a penniless tramp, and we’ve provided you with room and board and medical attention, and honest work to pay for it all. You can thank the good citizens of this town for their charity.”

  “Charity!” Kyla’s protest burst forth. “I wasn’t penniless until your ‘good citizens’ robbed me of everything I owned! And I wouldn’t have needed medical care if I hadn’t been flogged for something I didn’t—”

  A clout on her ear sent her staggering against the wall, her head ringing. Recovering her balance, she rubbed her aching ear, the same ear wounded by the mindstealer’s talons. If only Claid were here to rescue her now as he had then.

  “You’re well enough to lie and complain, you’re well enough to work, no matter what Doctor Sam says. You come with me.” The matron clamped her hand around Kyla’s wrist and dragged her from the room. “You don’t need to be taking up space in the infirmary. You’ll sleep in the ward tonight like everybody else.”

  It was all Kyla could do to keep from tripping over the long skirt and stiff petticoats as she was drawn through cheerless corridors and down a flight of creaking stairs. To the right of the steps a ma
n lounged against the side of an open archway. He snapped to attention and bowed as the matron approached.

  The matron led Kyla through the archway into a cavernous room filled with rows of small wooden tables, each topped with a peculiar metal device. At each table sat a woman dressed like Kyla. In the daylight filtering through several barred windows on both sides of the room, the women manipulated lengths of cloth, some dark, some brightly colored, across the tables and through the metal contraptions. They did this with one hand, while the other turned a wheel that drove a part of the table device up and down, stabbing the cloth on each descent. The hum and squeak of the wheels, the click of the stabbing part, the rustle and swish of cotton, wool, and muslin combined to sound like a strident insect chorus.

  Hunched over their work, the women did not look up, but a wiry little man picked his way down an aisle strewn with cloth. He carried a polished wooden rod and paused to bring it down with a sharp crack across a worker’s hand. Without another glance at his hapless victim, he hurried to bow before the matron. He spoke, but Kyla’s attention was fixed on the woman he’d struck, watching as she removed the cloth from the metal claws and examined it, then picked up a small scissors and snipped at a row of stitches.

  The matron cuffed Kyla. “Answer when you’re spoken to, girl.”

  Kyla blinked and turned her gaze to the man.

  “I asked if you know how to run a sewing machine.” He glared at Kyla and tapped his stick against his palm. The gesture reminded her of Ollie and Jake with their billy clubs.

  The memory turned her stomach. She swallowed hard. Unable to speak, she shook her head.

  The matron slammed her palm against Kyla’s back. “Answer!”

  Kyla yelped at the matron’s blow. The woman couldn’t have forgotten her injuries; she was being deliberately cruel. Blinking back tears, Kyla said, “I don’t know what a sewing machine is.”

  “Those are sewing machines,” the man said, giving her a disgusted look. “You’ve never seen one?”

  Kyla started to shake her head, caught herself, and answered, “I’ve never heard of such things.”

  “She’ll have to learn,” the matron said. “She’s already run up a big debt.” To Kyla she said, “This is Master Amos, your supervisor. He’ll show you what you’re to do. Any disobedience will be punished by reduced food rations and a fine added to your debt.”

  The matron left. Master Amos led Kyla down a narrow aisle to an unoccupied table near the rear of the room. “This is your assigned station,” he said. “Sit and I’ll bring you some scraps of cloth to practice on. Can’t have you working on anything good until you know what you’re doing. You’d better catch on quick, though. From what Matron says, you’ll have to work fast if you ever hope to catch up. Once you learn the machine, you’ll earn a credit of two small coppers for every garment you complete.”

  Filled with dread, Kyla sat and studied the ugly apparatus. Like an evil bird of prey, its black back rose from the shaft of the handwheel and arched to the moving head. A thick needle formed the beak.

  She gave the wheel a tentative turn and the needle descended, thrust into a hole in a flat metal plate beneath it, and reappeared as the bird’s head rose to glare at her with a slit silver eye.

  Master Amos’s return startled her. He dropped a pile of scraps of varying sizes and colors onto the table and set a spool of white thread on top of them. “Marta,” he called.

  The girl across the aisle jumped. “Yes, Master Amos?”

  “Show—what’s your name, girl?” He poked Kyla’s shoulder.

  She winced. “Kyla,” she said.

  “Kyla what? What’s the rest of it?”

  “Kyla Cren.” Speaking it in this place sullied the name her father had taught her to take pride in.

  He beckoned the girl he’d summoned. She rose and crossed the aisle. “Show Kyla how to thread the machine and how to feed the cloth. Get her started.”

  The girl groaned. “But I won’t be able to make my quota if—”

  Master Amos raised his stick. “Do as you’re told,” he barked.

  “Yes, sir,” the girl Marta said, flushing.

  Master Amos stalked off without a backward glance. Marta yanked her chair across the aisle and set it next to Kyla’s. Though younger than Kyla, probably no more than sixteen, her thin features had a hard cast with bitter green eyes and tight, unsmiling lips. “Bastard!” she said in a low whisper. “He doesn’t want me to make my quota.”

  She picked up the spool of thread and jammed it onto a spindle on the bird’s tail. With swift, angry motions she pulled the thread through guides and stabbed its end through the needle’s eye, oddly located in its point. Kyla did her best to follow the procedure, but Marta’s haste discouraged questions.

  Marta folded a scrap of cloth and quickly demonstrated how to feed the material under the needle while turning the wheel. Her rapid motions brought the cloth to the front of the table, a straight row of stitches running its length.

  She folded another scrap and handed it to Kyla. “You do it.”

  Kyla tried to duplicate the girl’s movements, but the cloth bunched into a tangled clump. With an exasperated sniff Marta reached around her, reversed the wheel, lifted the needle, and straightened the cloth. “Your two hands have to work in rhythm. You can’t move the cloth faster than you turn the wheel. Try again.”

  This time under Marta’s critical eye Kyla managed to get the cloth all the way through, but the resulting seam puckered, the line of stitches zigzagged.

  “You’d have to rip out that whole thing and do it over.” Marta’s face registered deep disgust. “Look, I gotta get back to my own work. Keep practicing. Find the pattern.”

  She scooted her chair back to her own station, dismissing Kyla as she might an annoying fly.

  Find the pattern. If only it were so easy. I’ve lost the pattern of my life. How can I find the pattern of this ugly thing—this machine?

  Kyla watched Marta, studying the deft motions of both hands, admiring the effortless way she directed the flow of the material to produce a perfect seam.

  Attempting to follow Marta’s instructions, Kyla drew the material toward her and turned the wheel. She couldn’t coordinate the two actions. The needle jammed, the material crumpled, the thread broke. Unwilling to disturb Marta, Kyla rethreaded the machine as best she could, and tried again. Stitches appeared in the cloth, not neat ones like Marta’s but loose and irregular. She puzzled over the problem, experimented with other arrangements, and only succeeded in snarling the thread and igniting her temper. She slammed the spool down on the table and shoved her chair back with a force that crashed it into the table behind her.

  “Hey! Careful!” came a woman’s outraged voice.

  A shadow fell over her; a stick pummeled her knuckles. Master Amos glared down. “You’ll be fined for that bit of carelessness, missy.” His hand scooped up the scraps of cloth. He pawed through them, tossed them onto her table. “You’ve done nothing but waste time. Marta!” He swung round and brought his stick down on the young girl’s shoulders. “I told you to teach her to use the machine.”

  Marta’s shoulders hunched but she made no outcry. “I did,” she said with a sullen glare at Kyla. “I showed her exactly what to do. Is it my fault she’s stupid?”

  He raised his rod and Marta flinched. “All right, I’ll try again.”

  “And, you, listen this time,” he ordered Kyla.

  When he’d moved away, Kyla whispered to Marta, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get you into trouble.”

  The girl shrugged. “He’s got it in for me. Last time he tried to grope me, I hollered for Matron.”

  She pointed out the path for the thread and made Kyla remove and replace the thread several times under her supervision. When Kyla could do it on her own, Marta showed her again how to move the material and turn the wheel at the same speed.

  “I gotta get back to my own machine,” Marta said. “You’ve got the idea, but if
you get stuck again, call me. Don’t let Master Amos have an excuse to keep you here after quitting time. Not until you’re smart enough to make sure he pays you in credits. Some of the women get their debts reduced that way. Never enough to get out of here, so what’s the use, I say.”

  She slipped across to her own table, leaving Kyla to practice on her own. With the terrifying new incentive that Marta had given her, Kyla bent to the effort. Her seams didn’t look like Marta’s, but after going through another pile of scraps she produced a reasonably straight row of stitches.

  When Master Amos examined the practice seams and declared her ready to work on an actual garment, Kyla felt a glow of foolish pride.

  Sewing a dress seam proved far different from placing a line of stitches across a folded scrap. The heavy material slipped away as she tried to guide it. The two sections, though pinned together, refused to stay even; one slipped out from under the other, leaving gaps and folds in the crooked seam. She spent most of her time plying the scissors Master Amos had given her along with the dress material. By the time the gathering darkness brought the long day to its end, Kyla had completed only one acceptable seam. Her shoulders and back ached dreadfully; she could hardly stand. Her knuckles were bruised from their encounters with the stick, her fingers were dry and stiff, and she was bleary-eyed from squinting at tiny stitches in the bad light.

  At least Master Amos didn’t hold her back when bored guards escorted the women to a communal dining hall. They took seats at long wooden tables lit by candles placed at wide intervals along the center. Matron stood at the head of the table. All eyes turned toward her. She pointed at an older woman, who rose to her feet, bowed her head, and intoned a prayer to Nisil, a god Kyla had never heard of.

  In Noster Valley people gave little attention to gods, though they spoke fearfully of the Dire Lords who ruled over the dead. Kyla felt as though she had somehow wandered into the Dire Realms. The woman’s flat voice held no pretense of sincerity, and Kyla could not imagine any god hearkening to such a prayer from such a place.