by Tracey Ward
Most other buildings in town are utilitarian. Uniform. Boxy and simple in their functionality. Apartments over ground floor workshops that line the streets. Carpenters, mechanics, and tailors all living above their workspace. The livestock are set back deeper in the cave, down a long tunnel along with the crops. The gardens. Farmers live with them the way the doctors live in the hospital.
I guess it used to be you had a separation of your life and your work, but that was too long ago for anyone to remember. It was before your life depended on your work. Yours and the lives of everyone around you. When I took my post with Forces I moved out of my family’s home and into an apartment with another member of my team. He was supposed to become my new family. We were meant to live and breathe our jobs together, earning our stripes and learning the commitment it takes to be a good soldier until we got married or died. Either instance meant your time in Forces ended. A lot of guys left by way of the former. Last year Micah went the way of the latter.
I live alone now, and his slot in Forces still hasn’t been filled.
Captain Fuller’s office is next to the cells that stand empty and almost entirely unused. There’s not a lot of call for law around here. There are only about three hundred people in our village and most of them have known each other all their lives. The only time we get newcomers is when we have to hire help from another town or someone gets married, bringing their spouse into the fold.
The other villages surrounding Porton are familiar but not family. Outsiders are hard to process here, just like anywhere else, but we do it well. I’ve been working with security under Captain Fuller for the last three years, since I was fifteen, and I’ve only seen the cells occupied once. Two guys got drunk during the Evening Festival and got into a fight over a meat pie. They spent the night in the cells sleeping it off, apologized in the morning, and were back to working together by dinner.
Our main job in security is keeping the place locked down in the dangerous hours. People can get wiggy, even if they’ve lived like this their whole lives. They try to make a break for it, to run outside, and it’s up to us to stop them. We’re doing it for their sake and the sake of every Gaian inside the mountain. If the doors are opened at the wrong hour it can destroy the temperature of the place in a heartbeat. We’ll bake or we’ll freeze, depending on the time of year.
I knock on the frame outside the Captain’s open door, careful not to step over the threshold until I’m invited.
He glances up from his notebook, grinning tightly when he sees me. “Grayson. You’re alive.”
“According to the doc, yeah.”
“Good man. What about the girl? I’m assuming she’s awake?”
“She is. Doctor Kanden is with her now.”
“What’s she like?”
“Confused. Afraid.”
“Violent?”
“No. Not at all. She’s sick. She can barely move.”
“Sick how?”
“She’s throwing up.”
“And you left her alone with the doctor?”
My shoulders tighten anxiously. “Like I said, she can barely move.”
He eyes me shrewdly before finally releasing me. He comes around his desk, sitting on the edge of it. “And you? What did Kanden say about you?”
I gesture to my side vaguely. “Bruised ribs. Nothing serious.”
“How long until you heal?”
“Maybe four weeks, probably less.”
He scowls at me, resting his foot on a wooden chair between us. “Really? Holster cracked his around this time last year. He was out of commission for two solid months.”
“I won’t take that long to heal. It’s as ser—“
Captain Fuller kicks the chair across the room.
He kicks it straight at me.
I jump out of the way, dodging it deftly but I pay for it almost immediately. I grunt as my side explodes in burning hot pain. I have to lean over, taking deep breathes through gritted teeth to manage the heat.
“Don’t downplay an injury,” Captain Fuller scolds me sternly. “It’s a disservice to you, me, and the people who count on you. You can’t defend yourself, let alone the town.”
“I can still do my job,” I hiss.
“Not well. Not now with what we have on our plate.”
I stand up straight, my body protesting angrily. “Are you telling me to go on leave?”
“Is that what you want to do?”
Do I want to get sent to the kitchens to cook? To the mills to make paper? The farms to feed pigs? Do I want to go civilian?
“No,” I tell him firmly. “I don’t want to go on leave. I want to stay with Forces, whatever it takes.”
Captain Fuller nods slowly, contemplating. “Did you ask the girl about her tattoo?”
“I—Uh, yeah, I did,” I stutter, thrown by the sudden change in subject. “She says it’s not what I think it is. That she’s no one.”
Captain Fuller grunts unhappily. “That’s a lie. She’s on her way to a Council seat. She’s somebody important.” He stands to go around his desk, taking his seat behind it. “Well, let her tell her lie for now. It probably makes her feel safe and I’d rather she was docile in that hospital bed than running around screaming her face off at the entire town.”
“Why would she do that?”
“You know how women are. Especially her kind.”
I stare at him blandly, letting the comment go unnoticed because to be completely honest I have absolutely no understanding of how women are. Not of any kind.
“Leave her with the doc for now,” the Captain continues. “I need you outside on patrol until Krysan comes on duty. Can you handle that?”
“Of course.”
“It’s a bad time to have you out of commission.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“It’s not your fault,” he says coldly, his tone belying his words. “We’ll do with you what we can. For now you’ll join Fren on the beach. There’s a team cleaning up the mess. Sifting through it for hidden treasures. It’s a waste of time if you ask me, but we need to keep things honest out there. Make sure no one is pocketing anything valuable to the village.”
I nod curtly. “I’m on it.”
He picks up his pen, dismissing me without a word.
After leaving the administrative building I weave my way through the streets to the large main entrance – two double doors that reach twenty feet high and thirty-five feet wide together. They’re larger than they need to be now, but hundreds of years ago when the mountain was being carved out the doors had to be large enough to let the digging equipment in. The warehouse looks pretty much the same. Oversized. I think they had high hopes when they built this place. Higher than they needed. The space inside is big enough to house double what we’re holding. From what I was taught in school it was at capacity in the beginning. Then things started to change. People moved, they branched out, they got stir crazy. They couldn’t handle it. They took to the seas.
When I get outside the sharp smell of the ocean hits me hard. I wish I could bottle it and keep it with me when we go under for the season. I’m not insane enough to try and sneak out to smell it during the ugly hours, but I do miss it. I miss the blue of the sky and the tang of the air. I wish I could lay on the mountain top and enjoy it for another day, another hour, but that’s not how we live. That’s not real life.
The beach is a mess of rubble and people. They’re milling around with carts, salvaging what they can and stacking what they can’t. Maybe people would take from the wreckage, maybe they wouldn’t, but with Forces out here watching they’re less likely to try.
The only way this place works, the only way any of the towns work, is if there’s trust that all things are for the greater good of the village. No job is awarded more food than another. No shelter is better. Extra labor is afforded the same amount of money and how you spend it or save it is entirely up to you. What supplies are found here will be added to the warehouse which means it’s added t
o all of our purses and we’ll all receive an equal share. Anyone who doesn’t like the system is welcome to try their fate in the city. It’s every man for himself, every job a different wage, and being robbed is a yearly expectation.
I see Fren on the other side of the beach. He raises his arms to wave to me. I do the same before looking for a place to take up post on this end. I smile when I spot my buddy Tae twenty feet down the beach.
“How bad is it?” I call, eyeing the battered fishing boat that brought me home.
Tae, a carpenter a few years older than I am, glances up from where he’s hunched over the hull. He has it turned over on the rocks with the bottom exposed. When I get closer I half expect to find a hole or two punched through it. Our landing wasn’t exactly a smooth one. But it looks whole. Solid.
“Hey, what’s up, man?” he greets me with a nod, his long black hair falling into his eyes. “Heard you had some cargo in this thing.”
“A Posher, yeah.”
“For real? She’s still alive?”
“Last I checked.”
“What does she look like? Is she hot?”
“She’s a mess.”
“But is she hot?”
I laugh, shaking my head. I knock my knuckles against the boat. “What’s the damage?”
He steps back with his hands in his pockets. “Not much. Broken oar is about it. I’ll have to check her out, make sure she’s still water tight but so far so good.” He reaches out and swats my chest with the back of his hand. “Thanks for going after her. If you hadn’t brought it back in we would have lost it for sure and I’d spend the better part of the night building a new one.”
“Yeah, no problem.”
I glance behind him, checking the beach. Broken boards, torn sails, and severed ropes pepper the shoreline. Big, bulbous barrels lay on their sides, nudged forward and back by the curious waves that play like children between them. Their insides are purple, deep and rich. Almost red.
“Wine barrels,” Tae tells me, noticing my stare.
“They had a lot of them.”
“Poshers love to party.”
“No kidding.”
The section of ship that the girl was tethered to is on the beach. I recognize it farther down, flipped over on the rocks. If I hadn’t pulled her out, pulled her arm from the socket doing it, she would have been crushed. She’d be dead.
Behind the beach on the dark brown dirt there’s a line of blankets. Each one is long, tall as a man, though not a single shape under them is the same. Some are big, some are small, and some are too small to be mistaken for anything but kids. The sight makes me sick inside.
“Is that the dead?” I ask thickly.
Tae nods solemnly. “Yeah. We’re up to ten so far but they’ll keep coming. Your girl is the only one that’s been brought in alive.”
“Don’t call her that.”
“Worried Karina will hear it?”
I glare at him. “Why do I tell you anything?”
“You didn’t actually tell me. I guessed.”
“I really have to stop being friends with you.”
“It’s not like it was a hard guess, Gray. You’ve spent all of your free time with her since we were in diapers. You see her more often than your own brother.”
I kick a stone across the beach. It clatters loudly until thudding into the side of a wine barrel. “Not lately.”
“Yeah, well, people have been talking. When are you guys going to bite the bullet and make it official?”
“Today. I asked her to marry me this morning. She wants you to be her maid of honor.”
“This is the best day of my life.”
“You’ll have to wear a dress.”
“Shaved my legs last night. I’m ready.”
I grin, kneeling down to turn over a small wooden box with foreign writing on the side. It pops open spilling water and seeds at my feet. “Have they been able to salvage anything good?”
“Not yet,” he replies seriously. “It’s still early though. The storm only let up an hour ago.” He stands up straight, raising his arms over his head to stretch his back. “We’ll be at this clean up until the night comes completely. Probably longer.”
“We should be fishing. Or fortifying the doors. Gathering wood. Pretty much anything but this.”
“Bodies are gonna keep coming and if we leave them out here over the winter they’ll freeze on the beach right outside our front door. We’ll wake up in a few months to slowly defrosting people-sicles and that’s not something I want any of the little kids to see.”
I stand with a grimace, both at the pain in my side and the picture he’s painting. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“Did Fuller tell you that we’re wasting our time?”
“He thinks everything is a waste of time.”
“What do you think?”
“I think no time outside could ever be a waste.”
“Amen, brother,” he agrees heartily. “Amen.”
Chapter Eight
Liv
The doctor brings me some provisions before helping me into the next room. There’s a tub waiting with steaming hot water and lavender scented soap. She stays with me, helping me to wash the salt off my skin while a girl comes in to clean the vomit off the floor. I give her a weak, apologetic smile as we pass in the hall.
She doesn’t return it.
Once I’m alone in bed again I throw up twice more, a feat that I personally find amazing since I didn’t know I had it in me. Literally. Just when I thought there couldn’t be anything left in me, my gut found something to spare.
I’m nibbling on a ginger cookie, a peppermint candle burning in the corner of the room, when there’s a light knock on the door. I panic, not sure if I should answer or not, but then I wonder why I wouldn’t. My inner turmoil goes on too long and eventually the person cracks the door and pokes their head inside.
It’s a guy. He looks familiar for half a second, as impossible as that is. He’s tall. Stocky and broad, more muscular than the other guy I saw. His hair is a similar color but cut way shorter, his skin the same light ruddy shade, and his eyes look about the same blue. The big difference between them is that this guy smiles at me when he sees me.
“You’re awake,” he says in a deep baritone.
“I am.”
“And an Eventide.”
“And you’re a…” I stop. I can’t remember what they call themselves here, and no part of me feels good about calling a man that size a Mole.
He grins crookedly. “Gaian.”
“Right. I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright. Do you mind if I come in?”
I purse my lips tightly, nervously looking into the hall behind him.
He notices my gaze and opens the door wide. “I’ll leave it open. All the way. Is that okay?”
I don’t know what it is, but no part of me feels okay. The candle isn’t helping, the ginger cookie is threatening to repeat on me, and the job that this guy is doing on my nerves is a real problem. I wish the doctor was still around. It’s crazy, but I’d even take the rude boy who was here when I woke up.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he tells me gently. “I promise. I’m here to help, actually. Doctor Kanden mentioned you’re having trouble with motion sickness.”
“Lack of,” I correct automatically.
He grins again. They seem to come easy to him. “Yeah. But I think I can still help. I gotta come in there to do it, though. Are you okay with that?”
No.
“Yes.”
He nods once, pushing the door open until it sits flush against the wall. He moves slowly to the end of my bed where he leans forward, bracing himself on the carved wood at the base. “You look nervous. Are you scared of me, Livandra?”
I blink, shocked. “I—how do you know my name?”
“Karina, the girl who took your dress to be cleaned, she told me. It’s stitched into the neckline.”
“My mother and I wear the same s
ize,” I hear myself explain quietly. “The maids are always getting our clothes mixed up so she had our names stitched inside them all.”
“It’s pretty. A mouthful, but pretty.”
“My brother calls me Liv.”
“Do you mind if I do too?”
I shrug, wringing my hands in my lap. “You can do you whatever you want. It’s your country.”
He chuckles. “You’re giving us too much credit. It’s more of a suburb.”
“To Porton?”
“Yeah. One of six. This one is called Gaia.”
“That’s Greek, right? For Earth?”
“That’s right.” He folds his arms over his chest, settling back into a stance that weighs heavy on his heels. “Your schools on the boats, they’re pretty good?”
“I wouldn’t know what to compare them to,” I answer evasively.
To be honest, I don’t know what they’re like. The schools on the city are a mystery to me. I walked by them once. It was the same day I discovered lemons. All of my own education came from private tutoring. Being the daughter of a Council member I was brought up on a steady diet of history, politics, business, and multiple languages. In addition to English I can speak fluent Spanish, German, and passable Japanese, the only language spoken in Zealand. I very much doubt the kids growing up on the city can say the same. Not in any language.
The guy nods in slow understanding. “Doc says you’ve never been on land before. Is that true?”
“Yeah.” I fight the urge to look at the bucket on the right side of my bed. I worry that the peppermint candle can’t mask the scent of my sick inside it. “I’m not doing so great with it. She says it’s why I’m so sick.”
He reaches for the back pocket of his dark pants. “I think I can help with that.”
“How?”
He has something in his hand, something small that disappears inside his large fingers. He nods to the left side of the bed. “Do you mind?”