Daughter of Two Worlds: Book Three of the Aun Series

by Lee Bezotte

  Faymia squinted as she struggled to clearly examine the man’s deep gash in the fading light, and the firelight dancing to the left of her seemed to be more of a hinderance than a help. “I’m afraid I may not be able to sew this shut,” she explained.

  “Wonderful,” the wounded slaver snorted as he drank from the whisky bottle. “I’m going to bleed to death overnight.”

  From the other side of the fire, Dulnear called out, “You will be just fine.” He then stood up and fetched a sword from the ground. He had been resting its tip in the flames until it was fully glowing red. “I will close up the wound for you.” He then walked over, took to one knee, and joined his wife by her side.

  “There’s no way!” Tcharron exclaimed.

  “It will not be as bad as you suppose,” the man from the north claimed. “And it would be better than dying.”

  “Wait!” the man shouted. He then drank as much whisky as he could in a single gulp before taking several deep breaths. Then, unexpectedly, his face bore a quizzical expression. “Do you really think you’re just going to march up to Ocmallum’s estate and demand that he give you information about this girl?”

  “No,” Dulnear said with a half-smile. “You are.” He then pressed the glowing steel into Tcharron’s underarm as the slaver howled out in agony into the night sky.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ahmcathare

  Maren huddled at the rear of her now locked cage as Kugun navigated the narrow city streets of Ahmcathare with a horse-drawn wagon. Streams of people bustled alongside of them, and Maren feared one of them might reach out and grab her through the bars so she curled up as tightly as she could, keeping her arms and legs as close as possible. Their trek upward toward the city’s center was often halted when another wagon traveling the opposite direction had to get by. Her new owner would curse at the other drivers and refused to stop and make room unless he had no other choice.

  Most of the great city’s streets were cramped and crowded, offering little of the grandness that seemed to be bestowed upon it from a distance. Its great spires and historic structures were breathtaking from afar. However, once inside the city proper, it was likely that one would find the filth and decay its defining qualities.

  Maren buried her nose into the sleeve of her dress. The smell of the horse manure that filled the streets was overwhelming. There was also something else that bothered her about being in the city. It was something that was less obvious than the sights, sounds, and smells of congestion and manic activity. It was familiar in a way, but elusive.

  Unexpectedly, there was a voice inside her mind. She recognized it immediately as the voice of her mother. She couldn’t understand what the voice was saying, but the feeling she experienced was just as strong as when she’d heard her mother’s voice as a younger child.

  Maren closed her eyes and let the feelings wash over her. It dawned on her that the last time she was in Ahmcathare, she was with her parents for business-related matters concerning her father. They were returning to their home in Blackcloth when their carriage was caught in a rockslide along a mountain pass. She recalled, with vivid memory, the sound of stone crashing into wood, the horses stumbling, and her panicked mother trying to reassure her that everything was going to be all right.

  She alone survived that day. After she crawled out from the wreckage, she felt the sensible thing to do was to continue the journey home by foot. After traveling for some time, she sat by the side of the road to rest until a boy from Blackcloth and a man from the north stopped to check on her. The boy took her in, and she had been well cared for by him until now.

  “Out of the way!” she heard Kugun yell from the front of the wagon. She glanced left and saw a man hauling a well-stocked handcart. He was blocking the entrance to a precarious-looking alley. Once the man was further down the street, the horses began making their way between the cramped stone buildings, but not before her new owner gave the man a piece of his mind.

  The noise of the crowd died down as they traveled further along the alley. Occasionally, Maren could hear Kugun curse as parts of his vehicle would catch the side of one of the buildings. She was tempted to reach out and touch the stone, but was afraid of what might happen if she did.

  Eventually, they came to a place where the alley opened up to a large, rectangular space that offered access to the backs of a handful of shops and offices. As the wagon moved closer to one of those shops, Maren could see that there were many slender, winding alleys that branched out from that space, and the thought of getting lost amongst them gave her a chill.

  Suddenly, Maren felt her cage jerk forward as the husky frame of her owner pulled it out of the wagon and let it drop to the ground. “Hey!” she yelled as her bottom hit the ground.

  “Dis is where you’ll be workin’,” the man said as he pushed the cage up to the back of his shop, next to the rear door. “I’ll git somethin’ to keep the rain out of this cage until I get some space inside set up for ye.” He then disappeared through a doorway saying something about being hungry.

  As the girl sat staring through the bars at her surroundings, she could see litter being jostled around by rats. The air was stale amongst the backs of the enormous buildings, and it smelled of urine and rotting food. This was not at all what she imagined it would be like to be a part of the festival crew. She didn’t like Kugun, she didn’t like the city, and she wondered when she was going to get to eat again.

  The alley was dark, and Kugun failed to return with anything to keep the rain out of Maren’s cage. Each sound that came from inside the apartment caused her to sit up and anticipate a covering, or at least something to eat, but it was as if the man had forgotten about her there and was just going about his life.

  “I’m hungry,” the girl said to herself as a persistent gurgling emanated from her stomach. As she looked about, she counted the lanterns that were glowing from the various windows in the access space where her cage resided. “Five,” she said out loud, and she felt a sense of comfort as their yellow flames cast a warm glow into the disgusting setting.

  Echoing from one of the many winding alleys, Maren could hear a dog barking, and the sound of children playing and laughing. The sound brought a smile to her face, and great sorrow at the same time. She imagined the children coming to her pen and talking to her about pirates and books. “I like adventure books!” she declared to one of her imaginary new friends.

  “We do too,” the pretend boy said. “Especially Smarmy Kidd Black!”

  Maren giggled. As she peered out of her cage at her new fictional pals, she noticed that her surroundings were much darker now. The barely visible sky was now pitch, and there were only two lanterns burning. She turned around and did her best to see the window to Kugun’s apartment, but it was dark now too. Realizing that the man had turned in for the night, she swallowed hard, curled up, and massaged her ear.

  Moments later, the sound of the playing children went silent, the dog no longer barked, and the final two lanterns were snuffed out. The darkness seemed to transform the dingy ally into something altogether different. There was only blackness now, and within the blackness was another world that teemed with terrifying sounds.

  Rats gnawed on decaying refuse, the wind blew over a rusted scrap, an unidentifiable sound that resembled a dead body being dragged through the alley, and all of it seemed to be heard at deafening volumes that made it hard to discern if it was happening across the opening or right in front of Maren’s cage.

  Maren did her best to curl up even tighter. She kept her back against the side of the cage that faced the wall of Kugun’s apartment. Though the darkness prevented her from seeing anything at all, she kept her eyes open. She shook as her surroundings took on greater life—and greater terror. The darkness seemed to take on a life of its own. It was no longer the absence of light, but a creature with twisted tentacles and razor teeth that danced through the air, reaching for a savory child to devour.

  The girl now gave up on keeping her e
yes open and closed them tightly. Through whispered prayers, her fatigue slowly and hesitatingly became greater than her fears and she drifted into a restless sleep.

  “Here’s some porridge,” Maren heard Kugun say as he unlocked her cage. “You sleep too late. Eat up while I unlock de store.”

  The girl rubbed the sleep from her eyes and examined the bowl of porridge sitting in front of her. She was used to sleeping in her pen. However, the eerie sounds of Ahmcathare’s back alleys interrupted her rest several times through the night and she was exhausted. She sat up, massaged her ear, and blinked at the bowl a few times. There was no spoon, so she carefully lifted it to her lips and tilted it so the gray gruel could find its way into her mouth. As she swallowed, she noticed a chalky, bland aftertaste that wasn’t there when Son made her porridge. She didn’t like it, but her hunger kept her eating more.

  “Move faster, girly!” her owner yelled from inside. He lived in a small, two-room apartment at the back of his store. The building’s rear entrance led to the dwelling, and there was a door to the shop from the room that served as a kitchen.

  Maren almost choked when she heard the shout and coughed before taking the next sip. By the time she had finished all of it, Kugun was waiting in the rear doorway with nostrils flared and arms folded. “I’m done,” she said as she exited the cage and brought him the empty bowl.

  The man stared down at her as she tried to hand him the bowl. “What er ya doin?” he asked.

  “Um, bringing you my bowl,” she explained.

  “Yer my slave!” he sneered. “I don’t wash yer dishes! You wash yer dishes, and you wash mine too!”

  Maren’s knees shook and her head felt dizzy as Kugun barked at her. She froze as she searched her mind for words and phrases to respond, but came up with none. She just stood there massaging her ear, staring up at the man.

  The man’s face turned red and his upper lip pulled back from his crooked teeth. “Stop starin’ at me and go wash the dishes!” he shouted as he moved back from the doorway and pointed toward the kitchen.

  Maren leapt and dashed into the apartment. Having never been inside, she accidentally went into the wrong room.

  “Da kitchen’s over dere, girly!” her owner hollered as he pointed to the other room.

  She turned around quickly, nearly dropping the bowl, and found a small room with a table, two chairs, and a counter full of dishes so dirty it was difficult to tell how long they had been sitting there. “Sorry,” was all she said as she walked over to a sink filled with water and began washing her bowl.

  “Now, you get dese dishes washed and den meet me in da shop. Do you understand?” the man said.

  Without turning from the sink, Maren nodded her head. “Uh huh.”

  After he had left the room, the girl began to talk to herself in a loud whisper. “How did all of these dishes get so dirty? Have they ever been washed? Perhaps he needs to be schooled in cleaning up after himself. If he did, then he wouldn’t need a…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. She signed to become a crew member, a helper, a worker maybe, but not a slave. The word sank deep into her stomach. Perhaps deeper than any other word she’d ever heard.

  “Girly!” Kugun yelled from the shop. “I hear ya whisperin’ somthin’ but not washin’. Just finish da bleedin’ dishes and get out here!”

  Maren moved more quickly and spoke more quietly to herself. It wasn’t the cleanest the dishes had ever been, but she considered the job done when they were all sitting on the opposite counter after a quick scrub with a sponge and a dip into the water.

  “Now, I wantcha ta clean all da dust off da merchandise,” the man explained as Maren walked into the shop. It was a small business with two large shelves that created three rows running from the front to the back of the store. Near the street entrance, there was a modest counter where Kugun stood to take payments for his wares. Behind it was a chair where he sat when things were slow. “My cousin is a blacksmith, and he makes all dese tools,” he added.

  The girl surveyed the shelves from where she stood, noticing that every bit of space on them was taken up by axes, hammers, augers, and gimlets. There were tools for holding, cutting, and hammering. Some she recognized from Gale Hill Farm, and others she had never seen before. They were poorly displayed, haphazardly strewn across the shelves, and covered in a layer of dust and dirt. “Like a tomb,” she whispered to herself.

  “What’s dat?” Kugun asked.

  “Nothing,” she answered at a volume barely above the previous whisper.

  “Well, take dis rag,” the man instructed. “Dere’s a big brouhaha comin’ ta dis part of da city in a few days and I want dis place lookin’ spiffy. Start in da front and make yer way toward da back.”

  Maren nodded in compliance but was unsure of the instructions and didn’t want to ask for clarification because she feared stirring the man’s anger. As he walked away, she murmured quietly, “Which front? The front of the apartment or the front by the street? There are three rows. Do I start at the front of one row and work my way back around of the other? Or do I get to the end of one, then walk back to the front of the next and continue there?” She was paralyzed with all of the ways she could get it wrong and incur the man’s wrath so she stood with her hand on her ear talking out her quandary.

  “Clean those blasted tools!” Kugun shouted from his chair behind the counter.

  The girl startled to attention and grabbed the nearest tool, disregarding any instructions to begin at the front and work her way back. She worked quickly at first, but her pace slowed as the shape of each tool reminded her of something different and amusing. Some became swords and exotic weapons in her imagination, while others were assembled together to form fantastic machinations. Remembering her angry boss, she glanced over at the front of the store and saw him restlessly snoozing. “Psssh, ahhh!” she quietly breathed as she caused one of the tools to crash into another. “We need to clean the body,” she muttered, then wiped the implement down with the cloth she was given.

  Noticing that Kugun was now snoring, and the noise she was making didn’t seem to disturb him at all, she allowed herself to become a little more lively with her play. “Look out for the metal pirates!” she said dramatically, yet in a quiet voice. Raising an unfamiliar object above her head, she declared, “The iron guard will stop them!”

  When a customer came into the store, Kugun woke with a snort. Standing up immediately, he almost lost his balance from being jolted from asleep to awake so quickly. “What can I help ye find?” he blurted out.

  Maren instantly stopped her make-believe and went to the back of the store where she tried to look busy cleaning tools. She spent the remainder of the morning cleaning, imagining, and doing her best to stay out of the shopkeeper’s line of sight.

  “I heard you like blackberry pie,” Kugun said as he slid a piece over to Maren on an old tin plate. They sat at the table in the apartment at the back of the shop.

  “Yes,” the girl said, looking at the plate, then back toward the man’s face. She didn’t like the look of this pie. What she had at the festival in Laor was bright and full and smelled of fresh cream and berries. This piece was flat, the cream was runny, and it smelled as if the berries were beginning to turn. “Most of the time,” she added, as she reached to massage her ear.

  “Stop playin’ wit yer damn ear!” he yelled as he slapped a fork down next to the plate.

  Maren startled and let go of her ear. She sat up straight and swallowed as she slowly reached for the fork. The unexpected shout caused her hand to tremble.

  “Why is yer hand shakin’?” the man asked with annoyance in his voice.

  The girl wanted to say that it was because the man scared her, but she felt that would be risky so she answered, “I don’t know.”

  “Well, yer a strange one,” he replied. “Yer the worst worker I ever ’ad.”

  Maren swallowed again and took a bite of the pie. It was flavorless and felt like paste in her mouth. “I’m
sorry,” she said as she forced the bite down.

  Kugun got up from his chair, turned toward the counter, and sliced a piece of pie for himself. Sitting down, he took a hefty forkful of it and shoveled it into his mouth. While still chewing, he said, “You’ve three days ta improve er I’m takin’ ya back ta da camp. You hear me?”

  The girl heard none of the man’s threats. Instead, she was fixated on a thin line of blackberry juice that ran from the corner of his mouth to the end of his whiskery chin. Pretending the escaping stream to be alive, she thought to herself, Let’s get out of this hole. It stinks in here! and a smile escaped from the corner of her mouth.

  Her boss’s forehead pushed down into a chubby pile on his brow. “What er ya smilin’ fer?” he demanded. “Do ye think this is a joke?” As he spoke, more juice came from his mouth and his exposed teeth revealed blackberry stains and pulp wedged between them.

  The sight made Maren’s earlier thought seem even more amusing, and a giggle escaped. When it did, she immediately noticed Kugun’s lip curl and his eyes burn hot. She didn’t see it, but she felt his large hand slap her across the cheek and temple. Her head jerked to the side and she felt pain radiate from there to the rest of her body. She caught herself on the table so she didn’t fall out of her chair. As the room spun, she could hear the man howling.

  “You disrespectful little brat! I git ye dis pie and ye mock me when I get cross! I’m not even gonna bother takin’ ye back ta da slaver camp. Tomorrow, I’m sellin’ ye ta da brothel!”

  Maren began to shake. She didn’t know what a brothel was, but she imagined it must be a place where people who aren’t wanted were thrown away. She stared through the man in front of her and sat in silence as her mind tried to process the consequence of her giggle.