A/N: For anyone who has been reading I changed Kala's name to Kalawei from Kalasenti because I felt the name too closely resembled that of Khalessi from Game of Thrones @_@ Just wanted to give you a heads up going into my next chapters.
-V
Chapter Nine
This business of passing out on ships was not something I wanted to get used to. In fact, it would be my mission from that point forward to refrain from passing out on a ship again.
Not an unfamiliar feeling, my sight was blurred as I opened them and had met myself with both Tommy and Zek’s faces. Tommy had been patting my head down with cold water while Zek mixed something in a bowl. No longer was I on the ground but on the warm bed with a small fire going in the stove and a patch over the sink.
Luckily, the fishy and musty smell of the cabin was being drown out by the smell of cooking on the stove. Zek seemed to have been making dinner as well as mixing something odd and sour smelling in that bowl. My vision also cleared quickly allowing me to gather myself again.
Being below water and knocked out for an unknown amount of time, the only thing I could tell for sure about the time was that it was after bedtime seeing as Tommy was stuck into my room in one piece. It might have alarmed her at first but I searched her arms, face and neck for wounds coming up with none. Instead, I looked to my own wrists to see the glowing bright red wounds around my wrists and part of the down my hands and up my arms.
My muscles had also been very weak. It was hard to move the blanket off of me as I tried to sit up, only met with Tommy’s hand.
“You need to relax. He continued to zap you for a while after you passed out. We were sure you were dead when I got back in.”
“It would take a lot more than that to kill me off.” I grabbed a cup of the liquid from the table and started to drink. I found out it was hot a little too late but I didn’t care. It was soothing to my dry throat and crackled voice. When I was finished I threw it onto the ground and fell back into the bed again.
“Boy, you sure can’t travel quietly, can you?” Tommy patted my head again, this time with the gaze of disappointment.
“What do you mean?” It should have been obvious but I asked anyway.
“The entire ship knows that an important passenger got into an altercation with the guard. It didn’t take long for them to put two and two together to come to the conclusion you were the new Bin-Rah.” Tommy dipped the towel in the liquid again and rung it out. She then waited and made sure I could focus again before she spoke, “The guards are having to do double shifts watching you. Apparently a few bounty hunters made their way on board and have been speading the word about getting the Bin-Rah and sharing the bounty.”
“Bounty?”
“It’s like I told you before, Kala.” Zek nervously stood and walked to the food he’d been cooking, “There are more than just the Courts looking for the Bin-Rah. The bounty for the underground trading systems would be beyond imagination.”
This explained the tense air in the cabin. That and the fact that the superior officer looking after me nearly killed me with his jolts. I knew he had a good scare when I didn’t go down initially but to continue on after I was out was vicious. If this was the sort of person the Courts found acceptable to transport me it seemed my perceptions of them were way off.
I scanned the room to ensure there were no weak points when I had seen an envelope sitting on the night stand of my bed. Zek was standing at the stove stirring some of his food when I reached for it. It was no sooner my skin touched the paper that he was ripping it from my hands and backing away.
“What is going on?”
“Zek received a letter while you were out.”
I reached for it again only to watch Zek continue withdrawing from me. It was very out of character for him, “What’s it say?”
“It doesn’t say anything. This is private. This… I do not have to share.”
Finally, he said no to me. I had been waiting for that moment for a very long time. It was refreshing.
“Ok, that’s fine.” Ignoring the warnings, I sat up and looked around. It had become so much colder despite the stove. My arms were bumping up at the exposure which Tommy quickly covered, “How long was I out for?”
“Nearly an entire day. We are set to arrive at the port any minute.” Tommy put the bowl aside and pulled a knife from her boot, one that had managed to go undetected during her inspection at the port. I figured it had something to do with the strange black and silver cloth it had been wrapped in.
As we spoke, she pulled a stone from her pocket and began to sharpen the blade.
“And this would be the Fifth Circle?”
Tommy sucked in a deep breath as she continued to tend to her weapon, “The Golden Circle. It got this name from the incredibly wealthy mountains of gold and silver. They also specialize in very high quality, high price and state of the art blacksmithing and armory. That being said, while they produce the most valuable export known to the Circles, don’t let that deceive you. This place is probably the most rouged and intense of the circles. Barbarians live in these mountains and it’s filthy.”
“It’s true. I have never actually been to the Golden Circle myself.” Zek added, “Nobleman Cris forbid it during my travels while working with the Sapphire House. It’s not the sort of place people of a sophisticated nature visit. In fact, most businessmen do their business through letters or through visual calls.”
With something of a smirk, Tommy shook her head and then looked up at me from her work, “I have been here many times. It’s rough but this will be our best opportunity to check-in with the others.”
When she spoke of the others she had been referring to the rest of the rebellion. In fact, her speaking so openly about it caused some confusion before I realized a small little cube that sat at the door seemed to be absorbing all of our voices and blocking sound out from the others.
Tommy had many tricks up her sleeves but she continued to impress me. I wished some of the technology used here seemed familiar but so far only small things stood out. I knew I came from a place more advanced than the Seventh Circle but as we further stepped into this world it was obvious there were things I would need to learn.
While I was healing, the process was slower than I would have liked. I would just have to make due. Trying to stand was a familiar struggle I didn’t care to relive but luckily I had two people with me dedicated to my survival and that was a small blessing considering.
When the ship docked at the port, our exit was slow as the ship was ordered to be evacuated before I was exposed to the rush. Once it was, the guards took me, the superior excluded, and rushed me away with their weapons in hand. As to be expected, a large mob of people hoping to get a first glimpse at the new Bin-Rah awaited me.
This was something like being a celebrity and it was nerve racking. The hood covered me completely and my trusty new blackmail, Martin, was like a human shield as Tommy and Zek stuck tightly to me. When we had managed our way through rough, hairy and pale looking fold as cold, imitation snow began to fall down around us, I managed to get my first real glimpse at the sea we’d just crossed.
Just as the man called for, the Golden Sea was in fact golden. The waters brushed in the metallic smells as gold managed to illuminate the surface creating a nearly pleasant and entrancing experience while surrounded by such dark and dreary surroundings.
The buildings were painted black and gray, nothing of color indicating they were hard working, stern folk with the mission of work, food and sleep only. Even the children, pushing their way through the crowd, were ravenous waiting for something more than the mines, mills and muck of their daily lives.
Everyone was dirty here. You couldn’t tell many of the men from the women. The children were dirty and spread out in varying ages with similar speak impediments and learning disabilities. You could tell by the way they spoke and shouted that education in this circle was not priority. You bred and you worked. This was the life of the Golden Circle.
Our transport was that of a standard Court issue and resembled the previous but was black. It was large, blocky and could comfortably transport us across the rough terrain ahead.
Much like the people of the Golden Circle, the mountains were fierce looking. With window privileges I looked high up into the sky to see that the treeless black, jagged rock mountains stretched so high into the sky that the dark gray clouds covered the tops. It was a dangerous place but under the very surface of those sharp, black rocks and slippery with icicles as sharp as knifes and long as vehicles were the best of riches this place could offer.
Once we were settled in the transport at a table similar to the one from before, to my surprise, we were ordered to relax by the guard Alyx and not bound to the table. The three of them stood before us like stone statues while we awaited Arthur to arrive back.
It was interesting to guess why it was he had been missing for so long in our journey thus far. Tommy and Zek both filled me in that he didn’t return to my room after the attack. In fact, the guards had been acting particularly nervous since the incident.
The sounds of footsteps coming up into the room indicated he was arriving. It wasn’t until he’d gotten into the physical cabin that I could hear his heart racing rapidly in fear. It was loud like a drum playing in the background and I didn’t even have to close my eyes to hear it. My body was recovering slowly but in no way did I look as pale or abused as this man looked now.
While I hated what he did to me and resisted his power with every inch of my being, what happened to him suddenly made me more fearful for what the end of my journey held. This man had done what he’d done for the Courts and now, after what looked like hours of his own torment, he stood there a wounded puppy doing his best to represent strength for his team.
The hearts of his guards also began to race as they had finally seen the man after he was ordered away. I vaguely remembered now hearing Martin come in and inform him, almost immediately after the shock had occurred, that he was needed on deck.
Someone must have been watching me more closely than I thought. It was going to be more dangerous the further we got to the inner circle. No longer could I toy with these people and take them for fools. I knew very well of my own arrogance simply because I knew what I could do. My body was definitely capable of much more but I still had no idea what this world had to offer.
In a sick way, I pitied the man before me now. I hated him but I also pitied him.
“We will not be staying in inn’s because the word has traveled of your arrival here. As I am sure you have been informed, this is a fairly dangerous circle which we will try and move across quickly. The Courts still demand you complete the journey to the best of the Gods wishes. Do any of you have any questions?”
It was killing him to speak to us as if we were all equals. A foreigner, a child and a slave, nothing was more degrading for a man in his position. The pale of his face as the once vibrant dark blonde hair reminded me of the pale skin on the people of this dark Circle.
Tommy raised her hand up slowly causing the man to look in her direction and not bark a rude or snide comment.
“I am actually quite hungry.”
“Me too.” I added with a smile. I couldn’t help wanting to use this as an opportunity to stuff my face. A growing pain in my stomach was not helping with the pain in my muscles and I needed to get some more rest.
Arthur snapped his fingers and disappeared again into his own cabin below. Alyx and Nicolas prepared some food for us, nothing fancy and only military dried in a familiar chalky taste, while Martin used her own expertise of driving a transport through rough terrain.
It was incredibly bumpy traveling through these mountains. People along the outside of the transport disappeared quickly as the further we traveled the harder it was for them to keep up. It was all of our hopes that in a short time we would be off the radar of any bounty hunters or religious fanatics. It seemed far-fetched to think it would be so easy but this was where the slick black surface of the mountains face would play to our advantage.
When the darkness and the pain began to become too much, I looked over at Zek who stood on my behalf and requested my bed be made out. When the cabin was transformed from an interrogation room into a sleeping quarter it didn’t feel quite as binding. In fact, it was very easy for me to fall to sleep with Tommy patting my head to continue relief and Zek watchfully looking after me like a guard dog.
My body felt as if it had actually fallen into slumber and landed hard into unconsciousness. I couldn’t remember a time since I had awoken for the first time in this place that my sleep was so deep and so intense. Once I landed and I had planted myself in this slumber it had brought with it a gift I did not expect.
It was the gift of memory.