The Year of the Lumin

by Andrew Ryan Henke

  She smiled and said, “Oh no, not at all. Actually, you go ahead and keep on using it as a stool. I think I’ll take you up on that offer of soup. What kind is it?”

  “Chicken, rice, vegetables. I get you some.”

  Asiada smiled evilly as she took the bowl of hot soup and ate it while sitting on top of Ratt’s chest. She made hums of pleasure and slurp noises as she ate. Small hisses and grunts escaped from the chest as she ate and it bumped and moved occasionally. She thought she heard the words, “Gonna kill you,” but she wasn’t sure.

  The large cook had dragged the chest to the door instead of using it as a stool again. Once Asiada was finished with the soup, she thanked the cook and had the slaves lift the chests once more.

  As she had the slaves carry the chests down the last flight of stairs to the bottom floor, she thought about the lecture she would undoubtedly get from Noir and the rage that would come from Ratt. She wasn’t sure why she delighted in torturing them so, but she knew whatever lecture she got would be worth it.

  Chapter 41

  Fresh air

  Noir felt the chest lift and the sounds of the kitchen faded away. A part of him cursed Asiada for what she did. They needed to get admitted into the Chiron army before it was too late. Also, he had to sit and smell that garbage for even longer because of her. But he couldn’t help himself from laughing at what she had done to Ratt.

  The chest tipped and jostled, signaling the last flight of stairs being descended. The most dangerous part of their escape was coming just ahead. Asiada had to convince the guards that she was leaving the tower with the last of her belongings. If it did not work, they could be stuck in the tower for a very long time.

  A few uneventful minutes passed and Noir’s legs and back started to feel sore. He had forgotten how large the bottom floor of the tower was. There would be the hired city guards, then one final small flight of stairs, and they would be out.

  Finally, Noir heard the voice of a man from outside the chest. “Asiada, are you leaving for good now?”

  Asiada answered, “Yes, this is the last of my stuff. They don’t need me there anymore so I’m going back to my father.”

  “He probably misses you. Good luck.”

  “Thank you.” And that was it; they were through. A few jostling steps signaling the last stairs and the sound of the city outside came to Noir’s ears.

  Surprisingly, a slight chill also came in through the slits in the chest. Had he really been in the tower for that long? It was late Summer when he came to the tower. It made sense that it would now be early Fall.

  The sounds of the city outside were refreshing. He realized that he had become tired of the echoing, stuffy tower rooms. He preferred being outside when possible. Even when he was back home, he always felt refreshed by outside air. He used to take walks around his neighborhood when he would get tired of his house.

  The thought of pining for being outside felt ironic considering Noir’s situation. His aching muscles and back caused him to wonder how far they would be taken before they could get out. The plan was that Asiada would find a secluded location where they could get out of the chests unnoticed.

  His thoughts were answered after a few minutes when he heard Asiada order the slaves, “Put the chests in that tent and you are dismissed back to the tower.” He felt a few more uneven steps by the slaves carrying him, then the chest dropped carelessly onto solid ground. The rustling of feet departed and Noir was left in silence.

  “Noir?” he heard Ratt’s whisper nearby.

  “I'm here. What?”

  “You had better hold me back when this thing gets open. I’m gonna kill that girl.”

  Noir hushed his laugh, but he could not hide the humorous tone from his voice. “I don’t blame you, but having a dead body on our hands might draw some attention. So I’d rather you didn’t, at least for now.”

  He laughed bitterly, “Well, she owes you her life then.”

  The sound of feet coming into the room hushed them both.

  “You boys comfy?” Asiada’s voice came to them through the cracks.

  Ratt spat, “Get us out you evil, vile woman. My back and knees hurt.”

  Asiada laughed and said, “For that, I’m letting Noir out first.”

  Noir heard the latch of the lock on his chest disengage as he said, “That’s probably for the best so I can hold Ratt back.” Light flooded into Noir’s small confined quarters and he blinked away his night vision. He sat up and stretched. “That wasn’t too bad. Forty minutes or so I’d say.” He looked around at the small tent they were in. It seemed to be the storehouse for a merchant who mostly sold random trinkets. The other chest and their two bags of belongings sat nearby. He saw the bag containing his Luxin armor and was glad he had not tried to wear it in the trunk. However, there was no time to put it on now.

  He stood and Asiada came close as if to whisper something to him. She pointed to a bowl of still-steaming soup placed far from Ratt’s chest. She whispered, “Let’s see how big of a stink he makes about the food to see if he deserves it.”

  Noir smiled and shook his head. “You are evil, you know that?”

  “You’re darn right she’s evil!” Ratt’s muffled voice said. The chest lurched in the sandy dirt. “Now what’s the hold up? You two are out there chatting it up while I’m still in here!”

  Asiada took the large metal keys and went to the lock on the other chest. She placed the key in the slot, turned it, and immediately the lid flung open. Ratt sat up and stretched, blinking at the sudden light as Noir had. Then he immediately locked eyes with Asiada and stood as well.

  Asiada grinned evilly and said, “Now are you going to be nice?”

  “Why would I be nice to you, you awful…” he stuttered trying to think of an insult potent enough, “witch! How could you sit there on my trunk and eat a bowl of soup when you knew how hungry I was?”

  Noir laughed. He had not known about her sitting on his trunk. The image of Ratt stewing with anger while she ate inches away from him was amusing.

  “It’s not my job to make sure you eat. You should have thought of that beforehand.”

  Ratt stepped out of the crate and shook a fist at her. While Ratt was truly frustrated at Asiada, it was obvious he was partly joking as well. “You… woman! It’s only because of Noir that you aren’t floating in a river somewhere right now. So I would thank him if I were you.”

  “Oh, death threats now!” Asiada laughed as she stepped aside to reveal the soup waiting for Ratt. She employed her usual saucy tone and said, “Such mean things to the woman who brought you a bowl of soup. Now what do you have to say?”

  Ratt’s jaw dropped and his eyes lit up with excitement when he saw the soup. “No way! You are the best, Asiada!” He jumped forward and grabbed Asiada around the waist, hugging her and lifting her off the ground at the same time. She let out a grunt, but she was smiling. Ratt put her down and ran to the soup, not bothering with a spoon.

  Smiling, Asiada turned to Noir and rolled her eyes. “Well, now that Ratt’s stomach has been taken care of, on to more important matters.”

  Noir said over the loud slurping, “Yeah, where are we and what place is this?”

  She answered, “I told this shopkeeper our situation and he agreed to let us use his back storeroom for whatever we needed. But I agreed to buy some of his merchandise.”

  Noir looked around at the trinkets. “Okay, but what merchandise, and how much of it?”

  “Not a lot, just what will fit into the two trunks. That was the deal.”

  “And I assume you have the money for this?”

  “I brought six hundred tali from my dad’s inn. That should cover anything I would think.”

  “I hope so,” Noir said. “Well let’s go talk to him.”

  “Han on,” Asiada interrupted him. “Put on your Luxin armor first. We'll get a better price if he sees you in your armor.

  “You've got to be kidding me!”

  “No. Trust me,
I know these things.”

  Noir sighed and pulled the pieces of his armor out of his pack of other belongings. He strapped them on quickly and fastened his cloak over his shoulders. He was getting faster at putting it all on, he realized.

  Noir walked to the flap of the tent and looked at Ratt who was sitting on the ground with his legs stretched out still slurping at the soup. “You can just stay here, Ratt.” He grunted a response and continued.

  Noir opened the flap of the tent and squinted in the sudden light. The busy streets of Chiron were refreshing to him. Being cooped up in the stodgy Azurite Tower for so long was tiring.

  They came out next to the merchant’s wooden stall. He was a young skinny man sporting a bushy goatee and short hair. When he saw Asiada and Noir exit the tent he smiled and said, “Hello. How are you master Luxin?” He looked at Noir. “You are tall to fit in something so small. Had a good stretch I take it?”

  Noir nodded oddly, “Yes, thank you.”

  “So,” the merchant spread his hands wide, “down to business?”

  “Yes, if you would like,” Asiada responded. “Do you have all of the goods?”

  The merchant smiled broadly, “Oh, yes. Plenty of it. Go get the chests and I will tally up the price.”

  Asiada led Noir back into the tent. Once inside, they stepped over the contently resting Ratt and Noir said, “What did you agree to buy anyway? We are going to have to dump it whatever it is.”

  She grabbed one of the empty chests and responded, “First of all, we aren’t going to dump anything that I buy with my own money.”

  Ratt interjected, “Your father’s money.”

  She ignored him and continued, “And second, we are buying goods that can be sold on our way. We can make money off of this deal in the end.”

  Noir grabbed the other trunk but stood in place, “No, no, no. We aren’t hauling these things on the way. The army will want us light and mobile. And it will make you money along the way, not us.”

  “We can discuss this later. I did agree to buy them, so there’s no going back now.” Noir grunted and followed Asiada out of the tent with the other chest.

  The merchant had dragged out three wooden crates full of straw. “These are of the finest quality and come straight from Londerin. Each is a collector’s item portraying a historical leader from Chiron’s past.” He buried his hand in the straw and pulled out an object that was a little larger than a man’s fist. It appeared to be a glass orb mounted on a wooden base. To Noir's eyes, the orb glowed very faintly with lux as the man held it. Small flecks of white circled slowly around a hastily carved wooden man in armor.

  Noir almost shouted with rage, “Snowglobes?! You agreed to buy trunks full of snowglobes?”

  The merchant looked at Noir oddly and said, “Sir, they are called hero orbs.”

  Noir ignored him. “Do you know how heavy these are going to be?”

  “Relax, Noir,” Asiada said softly. “These things are all the rage right now. They’ll sell in no time.” Noir stared open-mouthed at Asiada. He couldn’t believe she had agreed to something so ridiculous.

  Asiada opened the lids of the trunks and the merchant reached into the crates and pulled out the “hero orbs” and put them in the trunks. He counted as he went. Ratt exited the tent and came over to watch.

  “What is this junk?” Ratt said with a sour look on his face.

  The merchant stopped counting and both he and Asiada looked at Ratt with scowls. “They’re not junk,” the merchant said.

  “They’re collector’s items,” Asiada added.

  “Looks like junk to me. You don’t think we’re going to carry these, do you?”

  Asiada frowned in frustration and turned back to the merchant. “Keep going, please.”

  The merchant continued to pluck orb after orb out of the crates and put them in the first trunk. When it was full, he swapped to the second trunk. He continued counting, “Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four…”

  All of a sudden, Ratt said, “Hang on a second!” He took a step forward and took out the last orb that the merchant had placed in the trunk. “This one looks oddly familiar.”

  Ratt turned the trinket over in his hand and read the carved label. “General Grandel the Merciless.” He paused for a moment, then threw his head back and started laughing.

  Noir took it and looked at the poorly carved wooden figures inside. It showed what looked like two troops in armor battling a third man in black armor. A fourth figure in a red cape was running away in the opposite direction.

  The merchant said, “Yeah, that one is hard to sell. Nobody seems to want it. Honestly, I’m not even sure why they made it since the line is called hero orbs. They aren’t called coward orbs.” He chuckled and Noir suppressed his urge to shoot him a dirty look.

  Ratt’s laughter increased in volume and he said between laughs, “Grandel is the one nobody wants! Oh man, that’s hilarious!”

  Noir covertly nudged Ratt in the ribs and his laughter slowly died down. “Keep going, sir,” Noir said.

  The man counted out forty-three orbs then closed both trunk lids. He pulled out a brown piece of paper and a stick of red chalk and hastily scrawled out tally marks. “At 18 tali each, you would owe me 774 tali.” In a very exaggerated way, Ratt grabbed the counter to keep from falling. Noir was not very familiar with tali, but he knew that was a lot. He also knew that it was a lot more than the 600 tali that Asiada had brought.

  Asiada skillfully talked the man down to 599 tali in a matter of minutes. Noir was impressed. It was not the first tine Asiada had surprised him. She paid the man and, after saying his thanks, the merchant walked behind some shelves to store the tali he had just earned.

  The girl was shrewd. Noir wanted to dislike it, but there was something attractive in her methods.

  The merchant’s voice came from behind the shelves, “And don’t forget to get that other trunk out of my storeroom also.”

  Asiada walked into the tent storeroom but Ratt and Noir stopped and looked at each other. “Other trunk?”

  Ratt shook his head and growled, “She’s gotta be kidding!”

  They each grabbed one of the trunks containing the hero orbs and followed her inside the tent. Noir said as he exited the sunlight, “Asiada, we can’t have three chests! We have the sacks with our stuff in it to carry also!”

  “Relax, boys. When we get to the Chiron forces, they will have carriages for us.”

  Noir mentally took back anything he'd thought about the girl being attractively shrewd. “Asiada, I can’t believe you did this. What's in it, anyway?”

  “Well, some of it is my stuff,” her tone became accusing, “which you should be happy about considering I limited my stuff from three chests to half of one.” She went on, “And the rest is more stuff to sell.”

  Ratt threw his arms up into the air. “That’s just great! She’s turning our life-or-death battle into a money making excursion.” He squared off to Asiada and pointed a finger at her chest. “We didn’t agree to let you come so we could be your personal junk-carrying slaves!”

  Noir stepped forward and put a soothing hand on Ratt’s shoulder, “Relax, Ratt.” He backed down a bit. He asked Asiada, “How far is the checkpoint where we can enlist into the Chiron forces?”

  She responded defensively, “Not far.”

  “Well, let’s figure this out later so we can get going. You can yell at her all you want on the way, Ratt.”

  Asiada pulled the third wooden chest out from under a shelf. As she hefted it off the ground, it did not look much lighter than the chests holding the trinkets. Noir's emotions were torn. He was angry at her for weighing them down so much, but he felt there was a hidden reason why she was taking all this stuff. Noir shook his head and grabbed the third chest since Ratt already held the other. They somehow made the cloth sacks of their belongings stay on their shoulders as Asiada took the lead out of the tent.

  As he followed, Noir took in the capitol city of Chiron since
he knew it would be the last time he would see it for a long while. Foreshadowing the coming winter, the dusty streets held a light sting of cold air when the wind blew. The residents went about their daily business holding bags, urns, crates, and other assorted goods. Mothers hastened their children along and guards in armor scanned the crowds.

  One mother and her young daughter caught Noir's attention as the girl ran from her mother's skirt while she bargained for some grain. The mother's hand swiped only air as the child ran.

  The mother called out to the girl, “Vaneeah! Get back here!” Just as she called, the young girl turned to look, but her small feet kept going toward another merchant stall. The hard wooden corner of the stall met the young girl hard in the forehead. She immediately fell to the ground with an open gash on her head. The mother was immediately at her side. She put the small girl in her lap. She cradled the child and feverishly blotted the wound with her skirt. She was saying the girl's name desperately because she wasn't responding. Noir noticed that no one else along the busy street gave more than a quick glance at the situation. It was as if they purposefully tried to ignore the girl.

  Noir could not ignore the two in need and quickly put down his chest to the side of the street. He ran forward and knelt next to the mother who was saying over and over, “No, baby, no. It'll be okay.”

  As Noir knelt, the woman looked at him with confusion. Noir put one hand on her elbow and said, “I'm a Luxin. I can help.”

  The woman's reaction was not what he had expected. She pulled the unconscious girl away and pushed Noir back with her other hand. She had a look of anger and fear. “No! Get away! We don't need your help.”

  Noir felt helplessly confused. “What? Why? Ma`am, your daughter is really hurt. I would like to help.”

  The mother looked back to her daughter's bleeding forehead, then back at Noir. “Okay, but we don't have much.” She held the young girl out to Noir. “Can you take payment in goods as well as tali? Please, we don't have much tali.”

  Noir took the small unconscious girl in his arms but did not break eye contact with the woman. “Ma`am, I'm not going to make you pay anything.”