Mistress of the Wind (Arucadi Series Book 1)

by E. Rose Sabin

  When the prayer ended, solemn-faced little girls served bowls of stew and hard biscuits. Too tired and sore to be hungry, Kyla stirred her stew dispiritedly with a spoon and lifted only one or two bites to her mouth.

  “If you’re just going to play with that, give it to me. You owe me.”

  She looked up to find Marta seated beside her, a feral gleam in her green eyes. She’d been too weary to notice her table companions. She nodded and shoved her bowl over to Marta. Without a word of thanks the girl emptied the stew into her own bowl and slid Kyla’s back to her with a furtive sidewise glance. If it was against the rules to share food, apparently no one observed the transaction.

  After the meal, Marta walked beside Kyla as they were marched double-file out of the dining hall, up a flight of stairs, and down a corridor. Under the guards’ watchful eyes the women turned into one or another of three doorways.

  Kyla hesitated, not knowing where she was supposed to go. A guard approached her. “You the new woman? Kyla Cren? You go to ward three.”

  “That’s my ward,” Marta said. “Come on.”

  Marta led her into a large room lined with bunks. A middle-aged woman with a hooked nose and a pockmarked face placed herself in their path. “If you’re Kyla,” she said, “you’re to report to me. I’m Sadie. The ward monitor. And if you’re smart, you’ll stay away from that one.” She cast a meaningful look at Marta, who made a face and flounced away.

  Kyla was sorry to be left alone. Although the girl hadn’t been friendly, she’d offered more help than anyone else on this side of Rim Canyon.

  “Street whore, that one was,” Sadie said, gazing after Marta. “They brought her in here to protect respectable folk.” She consulted a fat notebook that she carried under her arm. “You’re no better, I see. Thief, beggar, kidnapper. No wonder you took up with that other piece of trash. Well, here you’ll follow rules and lead a decent life in spite of yourself.”

  Kyla was too tired to protest. Why bother? Sadie wouldn’t listen any more than anyone else had.

  Sadie continued her lecture. “You’re to keep yourself and your clothes clean, and I’ll inspect daily to make sure you do. The wake-up call sounds at five. You’ll make your bed, go to the washroom to bathe and dress, and come back here for inspection. We don’t go to breakfast until everyone’s passed, and if someone makes us late, we get less time to eat. You have to be at your machine by half-past seven. Any privileges you get you have to earn.”

  She scanned her notebook page and gave a loud snort. “You’ve got a long string of debits and nothing at all in the credit column. You’d better stir that lazy butt. Another day with no credits, and they’ll cut your food ration.” She smirked as though that result would amuse her. “Go to the end bunk in that corner,” she pointed to the back of the room. “Chamber pot’s under the bunk. There’s one blanket on the bed. You want another, you got to earn the credits for it. Lamps’ll be snuffed in a few minutes, so you better get ready for bed fast.”

  Most of the women had already undressed and were getting into bed. Some wore long nightgowns; some were nude. One near her bore scars on her pale flesh; floggings must not be uncommon. She spotted Marta already in bed at the opposite end of the room. Was it true that she’d been a whore? The charge could be as false as those leveled against her. She thought about what Marta said about Master Amos keeping her in the sewing room after quitting time and about making sure he paid in credits. Maybe Marta had been a whore. Or maybe being in here had turned her into one.

  When Kyla undressed, she discovered bloodstains on the back of her dress and camisole where the unhealed wounds had bled from the day’s abuses. As she hung the garments on a wall hook by her bed, Sadie snuffed the nearest oil lamp, forcing Kyla to finish undressing in darkness.

  The light blanket did little to ward off the cold. Tired as she was, Kyla couldn’t fall asleep. It was more than the cold, more than the pain in her back, more than the loneliness and hopelessness of being trapped in this place. Windspeaking had been the center of her life, and that center had become a void. She’d thought that her own faults kept her from seeing or speaking the wind here beyond the Rim, but the people’s ignorance of windspeaking suggested that the problem did not lie with her.

  While in the valley only windspeakers could discern the wind’s colors and understand its speech, all the people knew that windspeakers had that talent and honored them for it. Here no one knew what a windspeaker was. A different wind blew here, without speech and color.

  Maybe Claid’s insistence that windspeaking was a form of magic was true. If so, perhaps no magic could operate here. That could explain why Claid had not been able to rescue her. If he had no power to draw on, he truly was a helpless infant, and she must find a way to rescue him. She’d brought him here; she was responsible for him.

  Only the metal monster that had given her such a fright made her doubt the absence of magic. That thing had to be the diabolical creation of some powerful mage. She’d question the other women to learn what she could about the creature and to uncover the truth about this land.

  She’d barely made that decision when the brassy clang of a bell announced time for rising. She had passed the whole night without sleep.

  Sadie was stumbling around lighting the oil lamps and shouting for everyone to rise. Kyla staggered from the bunk. The other women were making their beds, so Kyla did the same. Following the others’ example, she gathered her clothes, held them in front of her to hide her nakedness, and paraded with the rest to the washroom. She looked for Marta and spotted her near the front of the line but couldn’t get her attention.

  Carrying their smelly chamber pots, they filed down a back stairway and along a path protected from prying eyes by a high, thick hedge on either side. The chill autumn air raised goose bumps on her bare flesh. The path led to a barnlike building. Inside, a wooden platform ran along one side, and on it a raised bench was studded with round holes of varying sizes. She learned that the platform covered a latrine when she saw the women empty their chamber pots into the largest hole and women sitting on the smaller holes to relieve themselves. They had no privacy here, and the stench that arose from the latrine made Kyla gag.

  Along the other side of the structure stood large barrels of water and in front of them were ten or eleven round metal tubs. Women dipped water from the barrels and poured it over themselves or dumped it into the tubs for a hasty bath. When she followed their example, the icy water she splashed over herself sent her into a spasm of shivering. She dried off quickly, struggled into the hated white dress, and waited for the others to finish.

  Sadie approached and circled round her like a sniffing dog. “Your dress is stained,” she said. “You can’t wear it like that. Take it off and wash it.”

  It did Kyla no good to protest. Sadie forced her to remove the gown and scrub out the bloodstains on its back while the other women waited with growing impatience. Their enraged glances and threatening mutters drove her to work fast, but Sadie refused to be satisfied until only a faint yellow stain remained. Then she allowed Kyla to put on the wet garment and led the group back to the ward.

  The angry women jostled Kyla and jabbed elbows into her back and sides as they walked. Kyla did her best to protect herself, though hampered by the chamber pot she carried. By the time they returned to the ward she was shaking from fear that their jabs would start her back bleeding again as well as from the cold of the wet garment against her skin.

  In the ward, Sadie inspected the bunks. She stopped at Kyla’s. “You call this bed made, girl?” she barked. “Strip it and do it again, and this time pull the sheet and blanket tight. I don’t want to see a single wrinkle.”

  Her ward mates groaned and stomped their feet in a menacing rhythm, Marta along with the rest, while Kyla, hands numb from cold, tried to obey Sadie’s order. By the time the ward monitor gave her grudging approval and the women trooped to the dining hall, breakfast was nearly over. No one could do more than gulp down a bi
t of thin gruel before the guards escorted them to the sewing room, where Master Amos waited, stick in hand.

  Kyla hunched miserably over her machine and tried to remember the lessons of the day before. Her stiff fingers could not thread the needle. Her hands could not coordinate the turning of the wheel and the movement of the cloth. Her weary mind could not concentrate on its task. Marta ignored her.

  She couldn’t question people who spoke to her only in anger. She couldn’t escape when she was never alone, never unguarded. How would she survive in this soulless land?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  VISITOR

  Kyla handed Master Amos her third finished garment and received the material for the next. She wouldn’t have time to complete it, but she’d make a good start. Three and a half garments in one day—the best she’d done in the two months she’d been here, though far below what Marta could do. Not enough to earn the credits for another blanket.

  She understood the system of debits and credits better now, and knew that with all the debits on her account spring would arrive and pass before she could earn the coveted blanket. Still, it was a goal to work for. What else was left?

  Her hands swung mechanically into the rhythm that made her an extension of the machine. She blanked her mind and let her fingers perform their automatic function.

  Master Amos stopped beside her. She tensed, waiting for the blow of his stick, forced herself to go on sewing as he continued to watch, not speaking. His surveillance unnerved her; her hand faltered on the wheel. The stitches puckered, but the expected blow did not come. She raised the needle and took up her scissors.

  Master Amos said, “Leave that. Matron wants to see you.”

  She dropped the scissors and looked up. What could she have done? Master Amos’s face wore its customary cross expression; it told her nothing.

  The past weeks had taught Kyla to avoid any action that might draw Matron’s attention. Matron delighted in heaping ridicule on any of her charges caught in some infraction of the rules. She was expert at devising punishments both torturous and humiliating.

  Once at the dining table Kyla had not seen the approach of the serving girl and had turned as the child placed the bowl of soup on the table. Her hand struck the girl’s arm, and the bowl overturned. Matron grabbed Kyla by the neck, shoved her face into the spilled soup, and held it down until Kyla had to breathe even though soup went up her nose, making her choke and cough.

  Matron let her raise her head and encouraged the women to laugh at Kyla’s wet and greasy face. She allowed her no food, and after the others had eaten she made them stay and watch Kyla scrub the entire table.

  Though Kyla could think of nothing she’d done this time, she was no less anxious. For Matron to summon her from the sewing hall, which was Master Amos’s domain, something must be seriously amiss. Kyla was trembling by the time she reached the archway where Matron waited just outside the sewing room.

  She quaked more at the sight of Matron’s outthrust jaw and stony eyes. She wanted to run, but the guard stood at attention, his hand on his pistol.

  Kyla remembered all too well how she had learned what that terrible weapon was. Two tables behind Marta had sat a gaunt woman whose racking coughs echoed throughout the room. The cough had grown worse for days, and the frequent spells interrupted the poor woman’s sewing so that she could scarcely complete a garment a day. When Master Amos applied his stick, it only brought on a fresh coughing attack. Pale, eyes glittering with fever, the woman slumped forward after a coughing spell. Master Amos brought his stick down on her back. She leaped to her feet and with unexpected strength shoved him across the aisle, picked up her chair and swung it at him. For once, every machine stopped, and every woman watched the chair crash against the hated supervisor’s side.

  The sick woman gathered up her skirt and ran for the archway. The guard stepped in front of her, his pistol drawn. A thunderclap echoed through the room. Blood gushed from a hole in her chest, and the woman collapsed.

  Master Amos regained his composure. He picked up the chair, set it in its place, and rapped his stick on the deserted machine. “Attention, everyone,” he called. “As you can see, the guard has cured Lily of her cough. Get back to work immediately, lest any of you develop an affliction that needs that same cure.”

  The hum of wheels and clicks of needles had resumed their familiar pattern.

  That background drone reassured Kyla now as she waited for Matron to speak. The women kept dutifully to their sewing, not curious enough to risk Master Amos’s wrath by stopping work to watch. Kyla tried to conceal her mounting tension and force her bowed head and downcast gaze to display only the required humility.

  “You have a visitor,” Matron announced abruptly.

  Kyla lifted her head to meet the woman’s flinty stare. “A visitor? Who?”

  “You’ll see soon enough. Follow me.” Matron spun around and marched off. Kyla trailed behind her.

  A visitor! The image of Alair flashed before her eyes and the hope she’d thought dead fluttered to life and beat its wings within her breast.

  Matron escorted her into a tiny room filled with a narrow table, a chair behind it, and a stool in front of it. Kyla’s hope collapsed. The man in the chair was not Alair; it was someone she’d never seen before.

  Matron pushed her onto the stool. “You may have half an hour, Master Stebbins.” She slammed out of the room, leaving Kyla alone with the stranger.

  Master Stebbins cleared his throat and regarded her with eyes magnified by thick-lensed, gold-rimmed spectacles. His gray hair was combed from one side to the other in an unsuccessful attempt to conceal its scarcity. A tic in his cheek betrayed his nervousness. Was he afraid of her? How ludicrous!

  He licked his lips before he spoke. “I’ve come for information,” he said at last. “About some books I purchased from Innkeeper Kotvas. I have learned that he, ah, acquired the books from you.”

  “He stole them from me,” Kyla said, her long-suppressed anger bursting forth. “Whatever you gave him for those books is rightfully mine.”

  “My dear young lady, you would find it impossible to support that claim,” he said. “However, I am willing to post a fair sum to your account here if you supply me with information I need about the books.”

  Kyla sat up straight and stared at this flustered little man. Could he actually offer a way for her to escape the morass of debt? “What information?” she asked cautiously.

  “First, where did you get the books? I must have the truth.”

  She frowned, not trusting him to believe her or to keep his word. “How much credit will you give me to answer your questions? How will you use the information?”

  He sat back, his hands resting on the desk, his long, thin fingers interlaced. “The amount you receive will depend on the value of your answers.”

  “What will keep you from cheating me?”

  “My dear, I’m an honest man. Your matron will verify that I have agreed to post to your account the four middies that your time here will cost you.”

  Kyla held back a smile. It would take her days to earn a credit of four of the midsize copper coins called middies. Matron had cheated this shopkeeper, and no doubt she’d cheat Kyla as well, and not post the credit to her account.

  “I’ll tell you where I got the books, though I doubt the knowledge will be worth anything to you. They belonged to my father. I inherited them on his death.”

  “Where did your father get them?” Master Stebbins asked eagerly.

  “I don’t know. He had them since well before I was born. He was a scribe and may have received them in payment for his services. I never asked him.”

  “A scribe!” Master Stebbins unlaced his fingers and leaned forward, his palms flat against the table. “So he could read the books? He knew their contents?”

  “Of course.”

  “And did he talk to you about those contents?” His voice held undisguised excitement.

  “He did more than t
hat,” Kyla said. “He taught me to read them.”

  “You can read?” His eyebrows rose. “You know what’s in the books? All of them?”

  “Yes, of course.” His eagerness added to Kyla’s suspicions. She thought of Claid’s care and protection of the books. She’d read them all, years ago. Could she have missed something that made them more valuable than she’d guessed?

  “Ah, and were the eleven books all you had?”

  “I had twelve.” Kyla grew impatient to find where the questions were leading.

  “Only eleven were brought to me.” Master Stebbins hands curled into fists. “Where is the twelfth?”

  The twelfth. The book of mathematical theory that had so fascinated Alair. “I left it in a place where I stayed on my journey here.”

  “Could you find that place again?” The shopkeeper was nearly panting in his excitement.

  “I know where it is, but— What is this about?”

  Master Stebbins stroked his sharp chin. From behind the thick lenses his eyes probed her for several seconds before he replied. “A client has expressed great interest in purchasing the books. However, he tells me that there should be twelve, not eleven. If I can produce the twelfth book, he will purchase the complete set at a very generous price. He will purchase only the complete set.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Kyla objected. “It’s not a set. The books have nothing to do with one another.”

  “So I thought. My client convinced me otherwise.”

  Alair and Claid both knew that she had twelve books; no one here on the far side of Rim Canyon had known or cared. Hope bloomed that one or the other could be using this ruse to rescue her. Just as quickly the hope faded. Neither the mage nor Claid would need such devious means. Something odd was afoot, but how it could help her she could not see. She probed further. “What did your client tell you?”

  Scowling, he removed his glasses and polished them, clearly unwilling to answer. Apparently he realized he would have to satisfy her curiosity if he hoped to get the information he wanted. He replaced his glasses and explained, “The books are diverse by title, contents, and size, it’s true. But they all have something in common. Each holds portions of a hidden message.”