The Azureans

by R Gene Curtis

  A few miles past Goluken’s house, the village comes into view as we crest a hill into what must be Juniter. The late-day sun is sinking behind a far hill, lighting the sky with an array of color that will turn to blackness in a matter of minutes. Juniter. A mining town. We’re here.

  “Wynn’s control posts are always in the center of the city,” Karl whispers.

  I shudder and nod. I’m in Wynn’s territory now, as are my friends. I already miss them. It’s just me and Karl now. How does he feel about being alone together? Does he miss Somrusee? Or is he strangely nervous, like I am? Are my nerves going crazy because I’m here with Karl, or because I’m in a strange place with people who might want to kill me?

  Karl leads the way through the village to what he identifies as the administrative hut. After a few streets, his hand reaches out and takes mine. I jump, surprised at the touch, but force myself to relax. It’s a natural gesture, since we’re pretending to be married. I haven’t held Karl’s hand since the day we came to the Forgotten World. It’s different now—muscular and sure. My nerves calm with my hand in his. He’s confident and sure as he strolls through the village. I’m glad Somrusee isn’t here to see us.

  “Ria,” he says softly. “It looks like they’re closed for the day.” His voice is soft, different than it was moments ago when we were outside the city.

  And then I realize, we’re being recorded. Everything we say from now on is accessible to Wynn. Karl has lived like this before. He knows what it is like to choose each word carefully.

  We stand outside the closed village center while the wind whips around us. The wind is giving me a headache. Karl’s confidence starts to wane, replaced by uncertainty. Neither of us know the protocol of what to do now. Are we supposed to find the village ruler? Spend the night outside and find him tomorrow? We should have asked Mara about this.

  “I’m not sure I want to stand out here all night,” Karl says.

  I squeeze his hand in response. And then my face gets hot. Squeezing hands seems like an intimate way to communicate. Karl doesn’t notice. He’s looking around.

  “I’m going to knock on the door of the next house,” he finally decides. I follow him as we walk over to the adjoining house. Karl pounds on the door.

  The footsteps of a heavy-set person approach. Karl still holds my hand, and I feel his muscles tense as he takes a step to maneuver in front of me. I like holding his hand—his concern about the situation makes me feel safe. The door swings open, and we are face to face with a large, angry man with gray hair.

  “Who are you?” he says roughly, though he does look surprised to see strangers.

  “I’m Iroyo,” Karl starts, “and this…”

  “I don’t want to know your names,” the man growls, “I want to know why you’re here.”

  Karl swallows. “We were sent here, sir, and…”

  “Are the rules different where you come from?” the man shouts, and he steps forward and slaps Karl across the face. Karl lets my hand go and staggers backward. I hope he’s exaggerating his pain. It would be smart, if he is. We don’t want to look like a threat to this man. Quickly, I move over to him and take his hand back, as if to steady him. He was exaggerating his pain. If only I felt like I could reach in my pocket to get some dirt without angering this large, angry stranger.

  “You interrupted my dinner,” the man says, and steps forward for another blow. But before he can strike, he sees me and stops. I try to appear scared and timid. I don’t look him in the eye.

  “Who is this?” the man asks as a smile slowly creeps onto his face.

  “My wife,” Karl gasps, straightening with exaggerated effort.

  “I see,” the large man says, and his eyes slide over me. I don’t have to pretend to be scared, even though I could break his leg with a single piece of dirt. I’m glad Karl can’t feel my emotions, even though I like being in touch with his. The way the man looks at me upsets him, too.

  “Papers?”

  Karl hands him our papers, and he starts to thumb through them.

  “We have a lot of work for you to do, Iroyo,” the man says, but he looks at me and then back down at the paper.

  “Another blue-eyed Sapphiri. I thought you all were dead. That’s okay, we can work you to death like we did the rest of them. And I’m sure we can keep you busy, Ria.” He laughs, and I feel sick. My papers say that I’m short of breath and weak. The idea was to limit the work that I could do, which we had hoped would give me time to find information about Wynn. That plan may not have been as smart as we thought.

  “I’ll put you in a spare house over here,” the man says. “That way you’ll be close.” He winks at me, sending more shivers up my spine. “We’ll talk in the morning.” We follow him to the small house and go inside. He shuts the door behind us and leaves.v

  I don’t want trouble here, not when Wynn is listening. I don’t know how much time he’ll have to listen on his way to the mountains, but he’ll have to realize we aren’t there eventually. And then he’ll listen all over his kingdom. It won’t be hard to find us.

  We’ll have to work as hard as we can with the time we do have.

  Karl lights a small candle, but that’s all we need since the house is so small. A small bed rests against one wall and a toilet sits four steps away on the other. A table is jammed between them. Somehow, I had envisioned a larger room with a bed for me and a bed for Karl. I hope Karl isn’t planning on sharing the bed.

  Karl is already moving quickly, his hands moving fast to explore the walls and the corners of the room. He catches me looking at him and mouths the word, “copper.”

  I run my hand along a wall, and I look in the corners, but I don’t see copper anywhere. And there aren’t many places to look. I start to say that we’re good, but Karl shakes his head and puts his fingers to his lips.

  So, I watch while Karl rummages through the bedding, all over the floor, and under and around the table. Then he drops to his hands and knees. He’s serious about this.

  “Let’s look up there,” he whispers, and he crouches down on the floor. I look at him strangely for a minute and he gestures to his back. I slip off my shoes and climb onto his back. It’s easy to keep my balance—he’s strong. If I stand on my tiptoes, I can reach the ledge of the roof. Karl crawls along the edge of the wall, and I keep my hands running along the edge, feeling for crevasses and cracks. After nearly going around the entire room, my fingers find a protrusion from a crack in the wood. I pull on it, and it slips out. I hold it toward the light, and it gleams a copper color. I step off Karl’s back. Hopefully this is the only piece of copper we have to worry about.

  I turn the copper in my fingers and transfer my consciousness to it. This is where they bring new people for initiation. My heart sinks as I listen. They send men out to work and take advantage of the women.

  “This place isn’t safe,” I tell Karl as he brushes himself off. “They don’t get many transfers, but they’re brutal when they do.”

  “We’ll have to work quickly,” Karl says. “We’ll stay together, and I’ll keep you safe.”

  “They won’t let you. They will force us to be separate.” I shudder.

  Karl frowns. “We’ll think of something tomorrow,” he says. “But let’s sleep now. You take the bed.” Karl pulls an extra blanket from our travel bag. He waits for me to get into bed and blows out the candle, sending the room into complete darkness.

  “I’ll sleep next to the door,” Karl says, and I hear him settle next to it. I curl into a ball in the bed. I’m scared, but I like that Karl is looking out for me. Still, it’s colder here, and the clothes are not nearly as warm as mountain garb. I put the copper in my mouth, and it heats up and warms the room a little, though not nearly enough.

  Karl said all the warm-skinned animals are in the mountains in the east. Wynn’s society could have used them, if he had been able to access the mountains. But, besides skins, I imagine there are probably a lot of resources in the mountains Wynn
could use to strengthen his society. And now all that’s open to him. What he will do when he gets there? What will he find out about me?

  I turn again on the bed, and I hear Karl sit up. “Ria,” his deep voice says softly, and I like hearing the name that might be the one I was born with. “Don’t worry—we’ll work hard. If there is something here, we’ll find it.”

  Even though I know neither of us has any idea if his words are right, they still slide over me like a warm blanket, and I’m finally able to relax.

  ✽✽✽

  The next morning, we’re both awake long before someone bangs on the door. I’m relieved—I’m anxious to get to work. Anxious to find something. Anything that might help us.

  “Let me get it,” I say, but Karl beats me to it. A rough man stands in the doorway. He smiles when he sees me, and I smell alcohol on his breath. It brings back memories—I used to smell the same smell every day on Dad’s breath.

  “Hello beautiful,” he says. I push by Karl and then by the man onto the porch. The village is small, quickly giving way to endless hills, mostly barren except for occasional sage brush or grass. With the sun up, I can see just how small it is here.

  “Good morning,” I say, but I can’t bring myself to look at the man. I recognize his voice from the copper, and it makes my blue blood boil. “We’re anxious to get to work.”

  The man laughs, “I’m here to take Iroyo to work,” he says. “But you’re staying home. Our work is too difficult for women.”

  He’s too close to me again. I step back and bend to brush my hands in the dirt. Karl joins us on the porch, and I smile when I see him. In the few seconds since we’ve answered the door, he’s adjusted his appearance. He’s tied his shirt in the back so it’s taut over his built frame. He saunters over to me and takes my hand. It isn’t fair what holding hands with him does to me when I need to be focused, though I like feeling his confidence through the hemazury.

  “Shall we head out?” Karl asks.

  The man smirks, but his face doesn’t show the same glee anymore. “You come with me,” he says, “but she stays here.”

  “I don’t think so.” I take a step away from the house.

  The man grabs my arm, his fingers cutting into my flesh. I cry out. Karl drops my hand and swings at the man. But I can’t let him fight. If Karl attacks, the man will have an excuse to kill him.

  “Don’t Iroyo,” I say with enough desperation that Karl steps away.

  “You’re staying here,” the man yells. The smell of his breath makes me dizzy. I remember Dad kicking my leg. Trying to get away.

  I transfer my consciousness to the dirt.

  I’m at the point where I can oscillate between consciousness of the dirt and an awareness of my surroundings. I brush my hand against the man’s shoulder and go directly to his stomach. It doesn’t take long before his grasp on my hand slackens and drops. He bends over and throws up, and I walk away from the house. Karl hurries to catch up, though we really don’t know where we’re going.

  After a few steps, I give the man’s stomach another squeeze. After another dry heave, he falls onto his knees while he tries to catch his breath.

  “Alright,” he mumbles. “I’m not feeling well today. I’ll get you started, and then I’m going home to rest.”

  I look away, so he can’t see the relief on my face.

  The man leads us to a small crevasse. I can see veins of green ore running through the rock. Copper. The man hands Karl a pick and a bucket. “Fill this bucket with the green ore by the end of the week, or you’ll get ten lashings.”

  Then, with that being his only instruction, he leaves us.

  Karl’s face is grim. “We don’t have much time,” he says. “How are we going to find anything before we have to escape? Do you want to leave?”

  I shake my head. “We have to try. You’ve already searched through every book we have, and once Wynn gets to the mountains, Arujan is just going to send him after us. You stay here and work. I’ll spend the day exploring and see if I can find anything that might give us information about Wynn.”

  Karl nods. “Okay. That sounds like a fine plan.” He turns and starts swinging the pick against the rock. Then he suddenly smiles. “Did you know the ancients mined copper by building fires on the ore, and then dousing the fires with water?”

  I shake my head, not sure when Karl might have studied ancient copper mining.

  “I can’t imagine these stone picks will be effective in breaking up the copper ore from the rock unless it’s been heated and cracked.”

  I stare at him blankly.

  A grin tugs at his lips, and it is enough to finally elicit a smile from me. “I read it somewhere,” he says, “but I don’t know if I remember it right. Our friend didn’t give me much training, but I’ll give the pick a whirl for today. Go ahead, and I’ll figure out what I can do.”

  I leave him then and run through the hills. The sun comes up and it gets hot, and I keep running. I find others working as I travel. They toil with picks and shovels, trying to break up the rocks with what looks like limited success.

  And the day drags on. I climb over steep and barren hills, careful not to be seen. I find a lot of ore, but not much else. No vegetation, and no sign of other houses or dwellings outside the city.

  At lunch I visit Karl. He has had little success coaxing ore out of the rocks, but no one has checked on him, either. The only person he’s seen is a small boy who brought him some desiccated vegetables. We don’t say much as we chew them, and then I go back out to see if there is anything here worth investigating.

  I’m back in time to return to the village with Karl. He has filled some of his bucket with copper ore flakes, but not too much. I haven’t found anything but barren hills. Has Wynn reached the mountains yet? Has he turned around? We won’t know when he does. This whole idea of running around the Hills is probably foolish anyway—how will we find any information when we have no idea where to look?

  27 Introspection

  Karl

  Lydia’s face is sunburnt and tired as we walk back to the village. It was a grueling day for me, too, fighting rocks for hours on end.

  This feels more like a death camp than Sattah did.

  The man from this morning greets us when we get back to the village. He reeks of alcohol. Still. Guess throwing up didn’t stop him.

  “Get anything?”

  I hand him the bucket.

  “Impressive.” He fingers the small flakes of ore. He pockets half of the flakes, but I don’t say anything. A brawl with this man isn’t going to help us. If Lydia can’t find anything, nothing can help us.

  “Get some rest, and I’ll be by to pick you up in the morning,” he says.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Lydia says.

  The man’s face darkens. “Women in this town stay home,” he says slowly. He takes a step toward her, but stops when I put my bucket down. He knows I’m stronger than he is, and he’s already pushed his luck stealing my ore. He eyes me, glowers at Lydia, and stumbles away.

  “What a jerk,” Lydia says in English.

  ✽✽✽

  That evening, after we pick up our dinner, we manage to corner a fellow villager to help us get our bearings.

  The man who greeted us last night was the inspector, who is only here about half the time. He left this afternoon, leaving Mylus, the man we met this morning, in charge. Mylus got his position because he collects his quota of copper faster than anyone else.

  No one seems to have ventured out of the village, which means they aren’t helpful in our search for clues.

  From what he knows, there aren’t any woman in the village other than Lydia. “They get transferred in here every so often,” he tells us, “but mining life is hard on them.”

  Lydia stays in the shadows after that, and we retire early in the evening.

  The next day we set out before dawn to the other side of town. We find a hilly spot located next to a small river. I spend the day buil
ding fires and cracking the copper deposits out of the hills. With the water nearby, I increase my efficiency at least ten times. The hot stone cracks when cold water hits it, leaving the copper exposed and somewhat easier to pry out of the mountain.

  Lydia continues to search the bare hills for any sign of where Wynn could have lived.

  I work all day, letting the swinging of the pick drown out the discouragement I feel. Somrusee and I went through almost every single book that Lydia discovered in the cave, and everything we could try to use against Wynn is too much of a stretch. It’s a really long shot to think we’ll find anything about Wynn here. He could have lived in a tent, or the village could have been built on top of where he was. Still, Lydia runs and I work, mostly because we don’t know what else to do. Finding a clue of how Togan beat Wynn seems like the only hope we have at this point.

  It’s already dark when we call it a night and head back to our one-room cabin. Lydia slumps down on top of her hard mattress. I lay down next to the door and stare into the darkness. The ground is hard, but I’m going to sleep here again. If we get ambushed during the night, I want to wake up when the door opens.

  Time passes, but I don’t fall asleep, and neither does Lydia. I listen to her breathe and think about her running all day without success. Is she as discouraged as I am? We haven’t found out anything. Are we just sitting here, ready to die as soon as Wynn figures out where we are? Why did we think we could do this? Why did I let Buen die for me? So I could run around for a few months and then follow him to the grave?

  Lydia turns again. I know so little about her. She doesn’t talk about herself like Tara did. I’m assuming she’s just as discouraged as I am, but am I right about that?

  She turns over in her bed again. We’re both drowning in worry that we can’t do anything about. I should try and talk to her. But, what would I say? I need to distract her from her thoughts, just as I need to be distracted from mine.