Chapter 43:

The boat floated across the lake, as gentle as a leaf on a pond. It moved about as slowly as a leaf, too, or so Mayah thought, with Mayah’s and Vek’s uneven strokes turning them this way and that and to the left and to the right. At one point they almost careened into sight of the soldiers at the front of the Temple. That was when Vek told her, thanks, but he would take care of both oars.

“What about your hand, though?” Mayah asked, a little embarrassed.

“I think it stopped bleeding.”

“Let me change the bandages, at least.”

Vek’s hand had not stopped bleeding, and when Mayah took a closer look at his face, she realized he was turning gray. This time she took more than the proper ten minutes to make sure the wound was closed. All the linen in Vek’s pack was soaked, but Mayah squeezed out the pieces the best she could before applying them to his injury.

It made her nervous that Vek didn’t seem to have the strength to joke or banter with her as he usually did. “You should eat,” she whispered, feeling bad that all she had to offer was a soaked food bar. “Here, take this. And drink this water bulb, too, you need to replenish your blood.”

Vek ate and drank but returned as soon as he could to his rowing. They had been maneuvering through a rising mist for several minutes, when, to Mayah’s horror, a voice cut through it. “Who’s there?” it called out in the pidgin.

Mayah shared a terrified glance with Vek. “It’s a mobile checkpoint unit,” he whispered. “We have to go into the water. We can’t get caught.”

Into the water? Mayah was not going to go back into the lake with its things slipping and tugging at her. And it really wasn’t a good idea for Vek to go dipping his injured hand into such a microbe-filled soup either.

“I said, who’s there?” the same voice called out.

Another spike of fear went through Mayah. To her right she could see the vague outline of a boat, a light hanging from its bow. Panic almost pushed her out the craft, microbes notwithstanding. She stopped with her fingers on the guardrail. Don’t be a coward, she told herself. Last time you sat and hid and let Vek’s finger get cut off. You’re out of the Temple now. Being a Rajas means something out here. Use that.

“I’ll play them off,” she told Vek. “I’ll order them to leave us alone.”

“They might leave you alone, but they’ll kill me without thinking,” Vek replied, his low voice strained.

“You go into the lake then. Stay by the left side of the boat, keep your hurt hand out of the water.”

To Mayah’s relief, Vek nodded, then slipped over the boat’s edge without a splash. She was alone now. Straightening her glasses, she tried to channel the most arrogant voice she could imagine. Be a princess, she told herself. Be a princess.

“I don’t speak your dirty serf language,” Mayah found herself saying. It wasn’t true. Mayah’s language tutors had taught her all three serf dialects, plus the pidgin. But a normal princess wouldn’t know anything but Rajim. “Say what you have to say in Rajim.”

“Princess?” the voice said, now cautious, now in Rajim. “Pardon, Princess, we were just…”

Out of the gloom Mayah saw that the patrol boat held two Eenta soldiers. The tall, thin man seated in the stern was the one speaking, while the other one was a woman with a fierce gaze. Mayah’s heart sank when she realized the woman was looking at her unkempt frock.

But I don’t look like a serf, Mayah reassured herself, as the patrol boat came closer. I’m too tall. Wait though – they can’t see that with me sitting down! No, no, it’s okay, my skin is Rajas skin. They’ll be able to tell I’m golder than a serf. I think.

“You were just what?” Mayah spat, as nastily as she could. “Disturbing me? I go out to try this boat – it’s my hobby, you know – and I get stopped and bothered by rude serfs?”

“She sounds like a Rajas,” the woman commented in Eenma to the thin man. “I don’t think a serf girl would be able to talk like that. Her clothes, though…”

“Excuse me,” Mayah punctuated her words with a glare. “I said I don’t speak your dirty serf language, so if you have something to say, say it in Rajim.”

“Yes, she sounds like a Rajas,” the man muttered. “But what is she doing out here, alone? In a boat? You don’t think she’s an escaped sacrifice, do you?”

“She’s not really old enough to be a sacrifice,” the Eenta woman replied. “She’s probably off to meet a lover from a different castle, someone she knew from when she was a junior Rajas.”

“Isn’t that illegal?”

“I said to speak in Rajim, or not at all. What are your names? I think this deserves a little reporting.”

As Mayah expected, both Eenta soldiers went rigid at her threat. They exchanged a glance, and the tall, thin man replied in Rajim, “We just want to ensure your safety, Princess.”

“We’re going to get in trouble if it turns out she’s not supposed to be here,” the woman muttered. “Maybe we should take her in, just in case.”

“We’ll be in worse trouble if she reports us,” the Eenta man snapped, even as he smiled at Mayah. “Even if we get rewarded for taking her in, we’ll get punished for displeasing her. The best we can hope for is to deny ever having seen her. Remember, we’re here to catch Chenta trying to escape from the Temple. Our orders say nothing about Rajas.”

“Are you going to continue to disobey me? Or are you leaving now?”

“Goldskin bitch,” the Eenta woman grumbled. Mayah stiffened. The woman’s eyes narrowed. Panicked, Mayah rolled her shoulders backwards, then forward, as if stretching her muscles. I didn’t freeze up because I understand Eenma, Mayah thought frantically at her. I’m just doing my exercises, you know, shoulder rolls.

“Sorry to disturb you, Princess,” the man said. He ducked his head in a bow. Mayah didn’t look at him, afraid that the relief would be too evident in her eyes. After a lingering glance on the part of the Eenta woman, she too, bobbed her head. “Sorry to disturb you, Princess,” she parroted, but there was something about the way she said the words that made Mayah uneasy.

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***

“I didn’t know you could speak like that. You sounded…”

“Like a Rajas?” Mayah offered. Vek was back in the boat, looking chilled both from the lake water and the ever-thickening mist. Mayah was starting to shiver herself. Her scratched finger was burning. She began digging through the lumpy-looking bundle at her feet, hoping it contained a blanket.

Her fingers closed instead on a book. The cold and curiosity fought inside Mayah for a second, and curiosity won. She tugged the soft-bound book out of the bundle and opened it. The Journal of the Lost Princess, the title page read. Parts I and III.

Mayah caught her breath. The Lost Princess had kept a journal? Mayah had never heard that before! She flipped it open, squinting through her glasses at the first page.

“What are you doing?”

Startled, Mayah looked up. “I’m – I’m reading –”

“Put that away.” Vek’s voice was harder than she’d ever heard it. “That’s not for you.”

Mayah pulled her hands away from the book, letting it fall closed onto her damp lap. Vek was not looking at her. His gaze was focused on some point far out in the mist.

“I was looking for a blanket,” she whispered.

Why would Vek be angry at her for looking at a book about the Lost Princess?

A familiar disquiet began settling into Mayah’s stomach. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t make sense just don’t let them be mad at you if they’re mad at you you will pay you will suffer you have to do like they want even if you don’t know what it is you have to figure it out you have to you have to –

She put the book away and hugged her knees to her chest. After a moment Vek spoke up. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

Relief washed through Mayah. “It’s nothing,” she said, eager to let it go. “I… I was just surprised to see Parts I and III put together like that.”

It was a rather obvious attempt to smooth things over, but Vek didn’t seem to mind going along with it. “We never found Part II. Some say the Lost Princess hid it purposefully, others say it was lost over time, but for whatever reason, we only have Parts I and III.”

We again. We…

The Free Serfs. That was what the Eenta soldier had said. The Free Serfs.

Mayah found herself smiling, pleased to have discovered the name of Vek’s – and Sukren’s – organization. The Free Serfs. Well, Mayah didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that this was an organization dedicated to getting rid of Rajas rule. That was why they wanted the Dome Ring, no doubt. She could feel it now, the mixed metal and bioplastic band in her pocket pressing against her thigh through a layer of wet clothing.

“How long have you been with the Free Serfs, Vek?”

If Vek was surprised that she knew the name, he didn’t show it. “Since I was eleven.”

“How long has Sukren been with the Free Serfs?”

“I think…” Vek began counting on his fingers. “Much longer than me. Twelve, maybe thirteen years?”

What?

“My entire life?” Mayah asked, her heartbeat quickening. “He’s been with the Free Serfs my entire life? And he never told me?”

Vek was quiet. Behind his head Mayah saw a series of towers rising wisp-like above the mist. It was the center that charged all capacitors, the chudathermal dry steam power plant that ran along the lake’s southeastern shore.

“Never?” Vek asked. “He never told you?”

“Well… he did write a journal about Rajas rule, which I found, after I followed some clues.” Mayah paused. “Do you think the Free Serfs put the clues there?”

“Probably.”

“Then… then Sukren told them where his notebook was so I could read it? So he knew I was going to read it?” She shook her head, trying to understand, then sneezed.

“I don’t know,” Vek said quietly. Then he added, “Check the bundle behind you, under the seat. I think there might be a cloak in it.”

Mayah stared blankly at Vek, the exhaustion from staying up all night catching up to her. She thought of Sukren, then hung her head, ashamed of the tears that came to her eyes. Now that they were in relative safety, all her emotions were flooding back. She wanted to know why Sukren had never told her. She wanted to understand what she had done to deserve his mistrust. She wanted to know if it was because she was a Rajas.

“Get some rest for now,” Vek said, his voice still soft. “We’re out of the Temple and on our way to Sukren. You… you can ask him all your questions then.”

***

“Princess?” Vek whispered.

She was curled up on her seat, her head resting on the pack stored behind her. A cloak covered her torso. Vek wet his lips with his tongue and tried again. “Are you awake?”

The princess didn’t stir. She stayed slumped against the pack, breathing deeply.

The white fog was still thick across the surface of the lake. It blocked the sight of the Temple from view. As the wind blew, however, the Temple appeared, then disappeared, then appeared again, smaller and further away than before. Vek shivered. The wind bit through his wet clothes. His missing little finger ached.

The glimmer of the patrol light through the mist, however, pushed him on. Vek had not expected the Eenta soldiers to give up easily, and they hadn’t. But with the blessing of the gods, he and the princess would escape them.

“Rock-god,” Vek murmured. Then he fell silent. Lady Nari did not approve of the greenhouse gods. Most doctor-priests and regents scorned the beliefs that centered on the gods of rock, water and fire. Superstition, they called it, a religious explanation for the natural cultural differences between the three ethnic groups.

We must go back to before the greenhouse gods, Vek had written once on some exam. He hadn’t done that well on it, but he still remembered his carefully memorized answer. We must go back to Matter and Intelligence, the very essence of being. Those are the forces we serve.

Vek remembered having a discussion with Sukren about it once. To his surprise, Sukren had been dismissive. “Of course that would be the right answer. Lady Nari is a Matterist. They don’t think anything is spiritually significant other than Matter and Intelligence. That’s why they’re called Matterists.”

“What do you believe in?” Vek had asked.

“The Promised Daughter,” Sukren had responded.

The patrol light was gaining on them. Vek quickened the pace of his rowing. There was an inlet to the west of the power plant, and it would take them out of the lake and into the woods that stretched along the border between the quinters of Industrilia and Stoneset. Vek had planned to set up camp that night at the edge of the woods. That would not be feasible now, not with Eenta soldiers on their tail. He pictured the bio-dome in his head and ran through his options. Then his heart sank.

The only Chenta greenhouse village in the vicinity was Rubber Post #2, where his parents lived.

After Vek had joined the Free Serfs, Lady Nari had offered to re-connect him with his family. Part of the Free Serf cause was to combat the Golden Castle’s destruction of serf families. Vek had been tempted by the prospect of seeing his mother, whom he had not visited since becoming a servie at the age of ten. But in the end, he had declined the offer.

Thrusting his bitterness away, Vek coaxed the boat to turn. Tendrils of mist clung to his arms and clothes but Vek ignored them. His attention was focused on steering the boat through the fog, into the inlet. Soon enough, the tops of the hollow-trees appeared above the dissipating mist, filling the air with a sweet, sharp scent.

He glanced at the princess’ sleeping form. Vek would have to wake her now. His eyes traveled over her dark hair, her square-framed glasses, her face. She looked very young.

“Mayah,” he called out, his voice cracking slightly. “Mayah, wake up. We’re here. We made it.”