Her? Secretary to the Counselor?

Kinon shook her head, mumbling something about not being educated enough to take up the responsibility. Surely she couldn’t be the only one who knew how to read and write. Leeron was a genius, Simon a heralded hero, and her siblings warriors and reformers of the new world. And he? She was no one.

Rossiu shook his head. “We are in need of people in the government, Miss Kinon.”

It was that smile, that hopeful watery smile that pricked at her. That reflection of a spirit that wanted to set things right, to do things. Just like Kamina.

She’d nodded slowly. It…couldn’t hurt to try, could it?

It wasn’t the first time he had approached her.  The first had been right after Allegro’s funeral, and she’d sent him off then, pointing a gun to his face when he’d mentioned the Score.  In her rage and sorrow, she had forgotten Rule One.  She had been this close to shooting him.

He’d persisted.  It wasn’t difficult to meet a fellow soldier in the military headquarters after all and he’d certainly took advantage of that.  But this time, she listened.  Listened to his stories about the atrocities of the Score.  Of how Allegro’s death was only one of many.  Victims, all of them, to a ridiculous remnant of the past.

So when he’d finally asked her, she’d accepted almost instantly.  It was the only obvious choice, really.  This world was twisted beyond saving.  He offered an exit to all that.

“General, the troops are ready.  Upon your order.”

She nodded.  “Very well.  Advance towards Sheridan.  Spare no one.”

—-

This so went over 101 words. Haaah.

It spread out, a blemish against the pale orange-purple of the dusk-kissed old city. It was red, smooth and an eyesore- the people all commented (to the air, of course, and to whomever would listen) that the city council was mad. You didn’t tear down old art for new art. It just wasn’t kosher.

It was, however, quite a surprise when the tongues didn’t flap when a large bird careened off course and hit smack into it. It fell on a little girl.

It tasted like cheese. Only not like cheese and a little more like the moldy bits. Like, whatsit. Salty. Tangy.

“Are you done yet?” she deadpanned, not looking the least bit pleased. “I’d like my leg back if it’s all right with you.”

She slurped it down with the deep brown sauce dribbling over her pock-marked chin. It ran all the way down her elbow, staining the red tablecloth with spots of dark brown. It had been so long since she’d tasted something so soft, so succulent. Self-restraint wilted in the face of such good food.

There was a collective gasp from behind her. “Sister!”

She stood up so fast , trying to hide the hard pile behind her wide girth. “No!” she hissed, glaring. “It’s all mine! I won’t let you!”

It was all hers. This soft orange crab- all hers!

His breath was coming out in short, staccato gasps. He was no longer the calm, stately gentleman who paid for wilted rose corsages from the poor girl selling on the street. He was…changed.

No, this had changed him. The feel of smooth flesh under his fingers, the stringy sensation of tousled, wavy locks caught in knots. She was still warm to touch, but he knew that she…no, it was going to cool. And when the coppers found it, he would be far, far away.

He rose from his crouching position and picked up his discarded tweed hat.

“Good night, my lady.”

It was heavy. Sanchez didn’t understand why they had to take THIS of all things. Surely there was something more convenient, more valuable, than this old clunky thing? They lived in an era of modern technology, where jets could zoom overhead melting polar icecaps in the north. This? Was ridiculous.

It was killing his back, this stupid thing. Damn it. Damn it. Why’d he let them talk him into this?

He shifted his weight onto his left foot, feeling his right shoulder ache. This whole thing was ridiculous. A pack of overgrown elves kidnapping a hippo? They must all be mad.

(Song prompt for this chapter: The Money Song from Monty Python. Y0u may laugh, yes.)

The rains had come in torrents, bringing the much-needed relief to Carthage. Jars were dragged out in prospect of collecting the wet manna from the heavens, streams of water trickling down the earthen sides. Children jumped into deep puddles, drenched head to toe. Mothers made no efforts to stop them- they merely smiled and watched the rain descend.

Jan knew of the rain, and hated it with a burning passion. When he woke to the sound of it pelting on the roof above his head that morning, he had bit off a particularly nasty curse under his breath.

Rain spelt the end of the talks between the water merchants of the oasis and the Heidrich family. Water trading- a lucrative trade especially in the dry desert was something that the Family definitely could not help not dabbling in. The economy for it had certainly floundered- they were even more filthy rich than they were. Not that they needed to prove it; apparently, everyone took it for granted that the most influential family of Carthage had the inherent right to increase their own wealth however they saw fit. Idiots in a row.

Bloody hell. Twenty years in servitude and he’d already started thinking like them.

He kicked off the blanket, flinching as the cold air hit his skin. Sleeping amidst the rain was like drinking rat piss- possible to do if you were desperate but unimaginable otherwise. The servants’ quarters were riddled with so many leaks that one could as well be sleeping outside and not notice the difference. He swung his legs over one end of the bed, surreptitiously kicking the occupant of the bunk under him.

“Get up, idiot.”

There was a groan from below and the sound of creaking metal as limbs came into contact with the bunk edges. A swear followed. “Too bloody early. Go back to sleep.”

The servants’ bell sounded somewhere in the distance, a persistent clanging that rose even the most deadened of sleepers to a half-awake stupor. The darkness outside was still prevalent, but one could already hear the shuffling in the room as others forsook their threadbare blankets and sheets to greet the dismal weather. No time for extra rest- everything had to be put into place and perfected down to the last detail before any of the Family awoke. It was the prevalent mindset ingrained into each of them since they had entered into servitude with the Heidrich. There was no place for tardiness, no place for one to slack unless they had a wish to be nonexistent.

Slaves, as Jan’s kind was usually called, dwelt at the bottom of the food chain. The only thing lower than them were the outcasts, those who had no place in society. They were those whom had come in contact with the Under grounders (via forced or other means, it was negligible) and were considered ‘unclean’- disregarded by anyone whom they came in contact with save for their own next-of-kin who were probably living in equally squalid conditions as them anyway. No one wanted to be an untouchable.

Jan leapt off the top bunk, giving little regard for the surprised yell of his bunkmate when the entire bunk structure gave a most horrific groan, sounding as if it was all going to come apart. It wasn’t his usual manner to play the tolerant jester for a man that snored with the magnitude of a thousand simultaneous sandstorms. At least, not in the mornings in which he’d leap off the bed and land in water.

Puddles of water had formed on the hard dirt floor, mixing with the pre-existing sand and soil to form a thin muddy layer on the floor. The slush hit the soles of his feet, covering them with mud that reached to his calves. Jan could only manage a most bemused look in the darkness as he lifted a foot out of the sticky material.

His bottom bunkmate, hacked a half-laugh-half-cough from his reclined position upon hearing the splash.

“Always told you not to jump like a damn grasshopper all over,” he howled gleefully as he sat up to dangle his legs over the side of the bed. “Damn kid’s too hyper for his own good. Damn, it’s dark. Can’t we have some light here?”

A patronising candle was lit somewhere in the room, bathing the room in weak light. The other occupants in the room gave feeble complaints about the intrusive light on their retinas, but were promptly ignored as he stuck his head forward to study the water. He whistled.

“If this were all drinkable, we’d make a fortune storing and selling it off when the rains stop,” he commented conversationally. “Imagine! D’you reckon we could filter off most of the filth and still keep all this to sell?”

Jan was far too busy trying to make his way out of the door and to the communal bath than to entertain insane ramblings of a man who seemed fixated enough on selling the murky water that everyone was currently soaking their stinking feet in. It wasn’t as if he was missing out on anything. He’d throw in his last few cents on a bet that the talk he was ignoring at the moment wasn’t one from the next revolutionist of Carthage’s bumbling economy. Idiots remained idiots at this level of society.

The water sloshed around his legs as he waded through the seemingly impenetrable flooded floor. It certainly had made it harder for everyone to move around, so if he exerted a little more effort, he’d probably be able to get a spot in the bath before it was filled up for the next hour or so. He shuffled out of the door.

His bunkmate followed not long behind, muttering to himself in quiet tones. “There’s nothing quite as wonderful as money, there’s nothing quite as beautiful as cash…”

——

The second Heidrich son seemed predisposed enough that morning on making his biannual journey to the neighbouring oasis despite being faced with the pelting rain and rising water levels outside. Pleading words from the harsh-faced Madam were duly ignored as he announced his intentions to the entire Family at the breakfast table. It was notable that he had somehow forgotten to state the fact that the festival celebrating the coming of the rain was to held in the town of the oasis that very night.

“I shall go and close the talks,” he had proclaimed with a wave of his delicately decorated glass. A little tea spilled over the rim when of his glass when he gestured dramatically, staining the pristine tablecloth with a widening brown blot. He gave no notice to the spillage, only pausing to bat away the servants that had appeared to clean the puddle.

“Go away!” he hissed, flapping his hands in an almost bad parody of an ostrich attempting to take flight. More tea slopped down on the tablecloth. “You have all day to scrub like maniacs when I’m not around. Don’t touch me with your filthy hands!”

They retreated, cowed.

However, one had to admit that he at least kept to his word. After the hefty breakfast, eleven servants had been ordered to escort him on his so-called ‘journey’ to the oasis: five a side to tote the carry-carriage and one to hold an umbrella over his head once he stepped out. There seemed no reason (at least to him) why he should be wet when there were enough to shelter him from the rain that drenched all his servants from head to toe. There was no reason as well as to why the lowly servants should be offered cover when they were all given roofs over their head thanks to his own family.

They lived to serve him, not vice versa. He’d be damned if he had to slog it out there in the rain just to comfort them like tiny children.

And that was Jan’s fate for today- trotting like an obedient workhorse in calf-high water while one-tenth of a Heidrich’s weight rested on his shoulders. The rain didn’t bother him so much as the fact that he was giving his spine heavyweight duty for the sake of a man who refused to get wet. The idea itself was insane. The man was insane.

He had a good mind to let go of the pole that he was supporting on one shoulder and watch the kindly young master enjoy the wonders of feeling murky water swirling around his feet. It would bring him back to his years of naiveté and childhood, he was sure.

“Tch,” he muttered under his breath, swiping limp strands of his blond bangs back. The rain seemed to show no sign of letting up, though it had been a hefty 3 hours since it first started. There was going to be another of those flash floods again- Carthage had seen a particularly bad one last year when half the stalls in the marketplace had been swept away. Those toting the carriage behind him murmured similar sentiments, expressing worry for their families that didn’t stay in the servants’ quarters. Money was one thing; lives were another.

The pole on his shoulder wobbled dangerously as the Heidrich son shifted in the carriage, yelling out another round of instructions. Apparently, they were moving too slow and he could hire palm trees that grew faster than all of them brought together. He could hear them all talking, which apparently disturbed his thinking process.

Funny that he could think while hearing the rain hit the roof of the carriage.

Their pace quickened, though laced with suitable wariness about their footing. The flow of water was far too fast for one to be able to even walk at a normal pace in normal circumstances and a slip would spell disaster. It wasn’t the question of being swept away- well yes, there was that possibility of losing one’s footing and being swept down to the oceans that apparently lay miles away from Carthage with a daunting journey back- but something else in the mind of others at the moment. No one wanted to be the first to be dismissed from the Heidrichs’ service.

Rule number one of Carthage society: If you’re low, don’t try to get lower.

It was bad enough that all of them were so-called slaves. No one wanted to make it worse by being an unemployed slave and having to mix around with the untouchables.

(And in Carthage amidst the rising water and perched precociously on a table, Lukas sneezed.)

The rain kept on coming, like tiny bits of stone thrown from the heavens.
It was inevitable. A warning cry rose to warn of the accidental slip, and the remaining nine staggered as the pressure on their shoulders increased twicefold. The weight on the shoulders rose to an excruciating point. Knees bent, straining against the slippery ground, hands released.

The carriage hit the ground in knee-high water.

The desert was a place of illusions and mirages- a place of intense extremes where the faint-hearted could not hope to survive. Those who eked out a living in the unforgiving sand mounds either fast learned to deal with the harsher realities of life or merely sat awaiting certain death in the dehydrating heat. It was not a forgiving master.

Lukas knew this well enough. His thirty-odd life had been spent attempting to scrape out a decent living in the hot city of Carthage- a fate certainly not favourable to any but when one was born surrounded by the natural barricade of sand and more sand, one tended to learn to make do with what one had instead of daydreaming of what could be. Dreams were worth nothing in these barren wastelands. Only reality.

He rubbed his eyes, wiggling his sweaty toes slightly to remove the tiny grains of sand that had gotten into the crevices between each toe. The sand was a grim, persistent reminder of the life to the people of Carthage- it went everywhere. Children cried upon finding them in the food, wives complained about it while sweeping, men laughed about it while waiting for the glass to cool. Sand was life, sand was death- that was the unspoken understanding that everyone shared. No one knew how life would have been without the sand; no one could quite imagine how it would be without it either.

“Laugh about it, complain about it all you want in crowds,” his father had told him when Lukas had first followed him on one of his rounds. “Never talk about it when you’re alone- remember that! Ears are everywhere. Once the desert hears you, you’ll never find your way out.”

His father never quite returned from his next visit to the other city. Some said that he had been caught in a sandstorm and probably starved to death. Others told him that his father had probably been captured by the cannibalistic Undergrounders and served as supper. No one had been able to give a certain answer, for no one ever dared venture past the oasis. He had watched as his older brother took the same route after the disappearance, slogging day by day until the same happened to him.

And now, it was his turn.

He chanced a look at the sky. The hot eye was almost at the horizon, and a cold zephyr had begun to rise the sands. It was time that he was going.

His sandaled feet made tiny crunches on the ground as he strolled through the almost empty marketplace. The merchants were almost done with packing the leftovers of their daily business, greeting him rather distractedly with half-waves as they calculated their earnings of the day. They knew him well enough to be able to greet him at sight, but none of them ever looked him in the eye. He was their regular supplier of material, yes, but to admit that one knew an outcast would be the same as instant suicide. No one mixed with the outcasts, though business transactions were allowed. It would spell financial ruin.

He nodded respectfully at two women who were talking to a priest at the side of the road. Their reactions never differed- the women would look all together horrified at being acknowledged by such a low-caste person, while the priest would utter a soft “Peace”. Only those involved in religion could actually look him in the eye- religion loved and acknowledged all, or so the preaching went. Others merely ignored him or looked affronted upon noticing his presence.

The long market street had reached an end, and smack in the middle of the road was a mule. A boy held the reins tightly as it tugged at it, looking all too restless at the long wait. Lukas came to a stop.

“Mamma tells you to be careful,” the boy intoned as he handed the camel-hide reins to Lukas. A handful of coins was handed over to the smaller boy in retribution. “The winds are coming in.”

“I will,” Lukas replied as he watched the younger boy count the coins under his breath. No schooling unlike those from higher castes, yet he knew how to count money even to the third denomination. When circumstances dictated that you learn how to live your life, you were to listen to it and not cry out like a rebellious child. “Five and a half. No need to count.”

“Just checking,” the boy shrugged as he pocketed the brass circles. “Mamma will be glad. Jaga.”
—-
Jaga- take care.

And take care Lukas certainly did tonight. The winds of the desert seemed to conspire against him tonight, raising more sand than they usually did, dropping the temperature faster than usual. He shivered, feeling the cold seep through the thin, rough fabric of his clothes.

The faster he got everything done and over with tonight, the better- it seemed that the seasonal rains may come soon. With any luck, Carthage would be blessed with rain tomorrow- enough to last them for weeks before they went back to the water-trading with the nearby oasis.

“The desert is great,” he uttered, half to himself, half to appease the great spirit of the sand that was probably listening to his mule’s every laborious step. If he was to meet his contact tonight, he would have to pray for the blessing of the desert to clear the sands that blinded his eyes.

A field mouse peeped out from its burrow as his mule plodded past, chittering slightly with a slight twitch of its nose. It was quiet out here with no sign of people, save for the sighing of the wind as it brushed above the sands. He trained his eyes to the horizon, watching for any sign of human life.

There was a black speck in the dying sunlight amidst the huge shadows of the mountains to the north. As Lukas rode closer, it enlarged into a shadow, and at last into a silhouette holding a tiny beacon that gave insufficient light for anything else but to light a few steps. The man from the Underground city was swathed head to toe in thick black fabric, leaving no section of the skin exposed to the air save for the eyes. Lukas had heard that the Undergrounders were sensitive to the light, and even the dying light had a phenomenal effect, a peeling effect if it was exposed even for short spans of time. He had never quite bothered to find out if this rumour was true- the Underground culture was not of his interest. Business remained business.

“The desert spirits greet you,” he uttered the usual greeting as he stopped the donkey. The fidgety beast tossed its head at him, braying obstinately.

“And may you be blessed,” came the wary reply. “What have you to trade with us today?”

He needn’t check the pouches on the mule to be able to rattle off the list of merchandise that the merchants had entrusted upon him to trade. When one spent their entire life being the go-between the Overworlders of Carthage and the Undergrounders, one shared no friends, no social contact with others to be able to occupy themselves with hobbies, so to say.

The veiled stranger listened and nodded at each item mentioned. “A goodly trade we shall have,” he spoke briefly. “I assume that you’ll be wanting the same items as previously requested?”

Lukas nodded, opening his mouth to repeat the orders from the merchants that he had received. However, before he could utter a word, there was a cry from one of the caves in the mountains. He turned his head, distracted.

Mountain cats and hyenas lived in the sparsely populated mountains, he knew, but that cry had sounded too human to be animal. There was talk that the entrance to the Underground city was from one of the caves in the mountains. No one knew. No one had ever seen the Underground city, not even him though he dealt with this same man on a regular basis.

The other man mimicked Lukas’ action, turning to the mountains. “They have expelled one from our ranks,” he spoke, a most regretful tone lacing his voice. The ends of his veil lifted slightly, blown by the wind. “He shall be left out to perish.”

It was not a suggestion- it was a statement. There was no place for outcasts for the Undergrounders.

“Peace be with his soul,” Lukas spoke with nary a sentiment for the abandoned boy. The other people could do whatever they liked with their own kind; it was none of his business. “Let us not delay each other any longer. Will you please lead on?”

“Certainly.”

Above head, there was the welcoming sound of thunder.