Chapter 44:

Blue-tinted greenhouse, weeping sap trees, single-room mud huts, ragged curtain doors. Seven years hadn’t changed Rubber Post #2 a single bit. Following custom, Vek grabbed and shook a handful of the curtain door’s fabric. Even in his weariness the force of his shake was strong enough to rattle the shaft that held up the tattered cloth.

Mayah was to his right, pouting. It had been funny, almost cute, how upset she had been when Vek woke her up. She had been even less pleased when she realized she had to help lug the boat through the woods until they reached a thicket inside which they could hide it.

Without warning, the curtain was pulled to the side. In the opening stood Father. Gray-haired, now, and stooping, the man squinted and frowned, as if he recognized Vek, but couldn’t quite remember who he was.

“Vek?” Mother emerged from behind Father. The feebleness in her voice was hard to bear. “Is it really you?”

Father’s eyes narrowed. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you a servie now?”

Vek could feel Father’s silent judgment. Are you slinking back here because you got kicked out? While Father had been working hard on behalf of the Eenta and the Rajas, harvesting rubber for soldiers to have shoes and for princesses to have erasers, Vek was what – wasting his life? Hadn’t he said over and over again that Vek had more potential than that?

It was hard for Vek to conceal his disgust. He managed to keep his face blank, however, as he glanced at Mayah. She had closed her eyes, in an apparent attempt to sleep standing up. “Princess,” he called.

As Vek had expected, the contempt on Father’s face was replaced with shock, then wonder. Father gave a low bow in Mayah’s direction. “Princess, how can we serve you?”

Over his head, Vek met Mother’s eyes. A familiar smirk was playing on her lips. It had been seven years since Vek had seen that smile, but he hadn’t forgotten it. What kind of man delights in being a slave? the corners of her lips sneered. What kind of man rejoices in his own oppression?

Yes, indeed, Vek thought, a hot knot of anger tightening inside his chest as Father ushered them inside. What kind of man are you? No father of mine – although I’ll never breathe a word to the contrary. Not for your sake, though, never for your sake, but for mine, and for Mother’s.

“Start a fire,” he told Father. It was warmer inside the grandmother hut, but Vek could still hear Mayah’s teeth chattering. He surveyed the room. The last time he had visited, his sister Anai had still been living with his parents. She was gone now, packed off to some children’s group home. Two sleeping toddlers had replaced her. Stepping carefully to avoid them, Vek pulled off his knapsack and placed it on the floor. Inside were the bioplastic bundles from their boat. He pulled one out and dug through it until he found a village suit. This he handed to Mayah.

She began changing before Vek even had the chance to turn his back. As soon as she was dressed, she lay down on the straw mat Vek’s father offered to her. In moments, she was asleep. Father, after gazing at Mayah for a little longer than Vek liked, also went back to sleep. Soon enough, Vek found himself alone with his mother.

Mother kept stealing glances at Mayah, and small wonder. Who ever heard of Chenta village serfs hosting a princess? Father hadn’t even asked any questions, as if the presence of a Rajas was enough explanation – which showed how much he knew.

“Is she the one?”

Mother’s low voice was tightly controlled, but Vek could hear the excitement in it. “Is she the one we’ve been waiting for?”

“She is,” Vek replied. He leaned forward and touched his mother’s cheek, fingers tracing the wrinkles she had collected over her thirty-four years. The fire crackled behind them, steaming his wet clothes.

“And the prophecies – they’re being followed?”

For a moment Vek considered what it meant to follow the prophecies. To view them not as vague, ancient principles, but present commands to be enacted on the Rajas girl sleeping in the corner. The idea made him uncomfortable.

But it had to be done, didn’t it? No matter what the cost. That was what the exam answer was, anyway. And after the Uprising, after the overthrow of the Golden Castle, everything would be better. Everything would be the way it was supposed to be.

It was just odd. For the Promised Daughter to be so… he struggled for the right word. Helpless? Clueless?

Mother was still waiting for his response. He flashed her a grin that he knew would take her back to his childhood, and her youth. “Yes, the prophecies are being followed.”

She closed her eyes and touched her fingers to one eyelid, then the other. It was a weary gesture, with the weight of years of suffering behind it. Seeing it stirred something up inside Vek. He wanted to find a mountain to climb, a castle to storm, an Eenta soldier to slaughter, any sacrifice to offer to the gods as long as they would ease the ache in his mother’s face.

He gripped her hand. “Soon,” he whispered. “Soon, everything will be perfect.”

“I’m very proud of you,” Mother whispered back, her callused fingers curling around Vek’s. “I knew that even though your father… I knew I could always count on you.”

***

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Were those your parents?”

Mayah’s voice was pensive. Vek looked at her. His leaden head was making it hard to focus. “What?” he asked.

She frowned at him. “Are you wearing the same clothes as yesterday?”

Vek nodded and looked down at his suit. The fire last night had dried most of it out. The fever that had come upon him as he slept, however, had dampened his inner shirt with sweat. Disliking the feeling, he tugged at it, peeling the fabric away from his skin.

“Vek, you should have changed clothes. You could have gotten hypothermia. You might still –”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine. Maybe we should stay here a little longer, so you can rest. Now that your family is at work, we have plenty of room.”

His muddied mind couldn’t find a reply at first. “Babies nap here during the day,” he managed. “People come to check.”

The threat of getting caught was enough, apparently, to inspire Mayah to action. She insisted on carrying Vek’s pack. He let her. He was feeling tired enough to be grateful. Besides, the bundles inside his pack weren’t that heavy. The heaviest thing inside them, in fact, was a new daysclock, and that Vek would carry himself. About the length of his longest finger, it was wide enough to strap around his wrist. On its face, blinking symbols laid out the hours of a diurnal – of a single planetary rotation. Three lines divided the 75-hour period into three 25-hour sections; another three lines further divided each 25-hour section in two, giving the Saranai Earth-like periods of “day” and “night.”

Most serfs didn’t carry daysclocks. Most Saranai didn’t carry daysclocks. Each castle had a flashing watchtower that shinecasted what hour of the day or night it was, and whether it was day or night. You could almost always see at least one watchtower no matter where in the bio-dome you were. The Temple – and the forests – were the only places where time was blind.

“Where are we going now?” Mayah asked, as they pushed deeper into the woods. Flashes of orange, blue and green emanated from the flowers and leaves around them, lighting up their way. “Are we going to the crosspoint, like that Eenta soldier said?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s that?”

Vek pointed forward.

“There won’t be any more side missions, will there?” Mayah’s voice was suddenly suspicious. Vek watched her fingers touch a small pouch hanging from the belt fastened around her hips. He had found it in one of the bioplastic bundles and had given it to her to hold the Dome Ring.

Wanting to reassure her, Vek managed to force a half-smile. He felt colder than he ever had in his life, yet he couldn’t stop sweating. “No more side missions. We’re going to Sukren now.”

“Good.”

It was dark inside the forest. Many of the trees towered over them, their trunks like columns planted into the ground, their branches turning, bending to form leafy spirals that reached out with curled fingers to grip the sky. “These are saplings, actually,” Mayah informed him. “They don’t grow as tall as the castles or as tall as the trees that make up the bio-dome’s frame.” She seemed fascinated by the yellow limestone-capped woods, and eager to impart to Vek every piece of knowledge she had about it. As long as she didn’t expect him to answer – which she didn’t seem to – Vek was happy to let her prattle.

“There used to be bats living in this forest. I’ve seen cameragrams of them in my books.

Bitty-bats, tiny little things. They can eat these breathflowers, did you know that?” Mayah gestured to the luminescent blossoms sprouting from the vines that hung on every hollow-tree. “The bitty-bats’ bodies are so small, and they eat so little that whatever toxin they take in from eating the breathflowers doesn’t kill them because they ingest such a small amount of it each time.”

“Mm.”

Mayah drew in a deep breath. She touched a blue-veined leaf that glowed bright against the night’s darkness. “Can you tell the difference in the air? There’s so much more oxygen here. It comes from the bacteria living on the breathflowers. They produce ozone, which disassociates into oxygen molecules. That’s how the bio-dome keeps us alive. I remember learning that the bio-dome was so successful, we ended up not having enough carbon dioxide inside it for our Earth flora to grow. That’s why we moved all our plants into greenhouses. That’s why we built our greenhouses big enough to hold serf villages inside them, so that whatever carbon dioxide the serfs breathe out will stay inside the greenhouses, for the plants to absorb.”

Vek stopped, mid-stride.

“What’s wrong?” Mayah asked.

Her levity was unbearable. “Those are my parents, you know. My sister. Hanjan. Me. That’s who they forced into the greenhouses.”

“I’m sorry, I… I didn’t mean…”

Vek closed his eyes. His head was pounding.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Vek? Here, let’s sit down.”

He allowed Mayah to help him to the ground. When she handed him a water bulb, he drank half of it, then handed it back to Mayah. “You should drink too.”

She accepted the bulb but did not put it to her lips. “So those were your parents?”

Vek gave a weak laugh. “That’s a good question.”

“What do you mean?”

He turned to face Mayah. “You weren’t asking because… you do know how serf marriages are arranged, don’t you?”

She shook her head.

It was like they were in the Temple all over again, and Vek discovering anew that Mayah hadn’t known what the Temple was for. This time, though, it made him angry. How could she not know what the Golden Castle had done to serf families? How could she be so ignorant of the pain the Rajas inflicted?

“The Rajas did this to us. They –” Vek stopped himself. He tried to remember the answer he had been taught to give on Lady Nari’s exams. “In the beginning, the Rajas wanted a plentiful labor supply without having to invest in breeding systems, so they decreed there should be no serf marriages. Every woman was for the taking of any man who could lay her. During Queen Zi’s reign, however, there was a push both to allow serfs to marry, and to limit sexual activity to marriage so that serf women wouldn’t be so used. The Rajas didn’t want to let this happen, but there was enough of a movement that they had to, at least in part. They made it such that inside a serf woman’s village, no man except her husband could touch her. But if she ever left the village, the old law would apply. Then do you know what the Rajas did?”

Mayah’s eyes were round. “No.”

“They decided they needed castle serfs. They could have called just serf men out of their villages to serve them, but they didn’t. They ordered serf women out too, and then told them, good luck – the old law applies to you now.

“So if you ask any serf who their parents are, they can point you to a mother. But a father? That’s a different story. Unless the woman has never left her village, or always traveled with her husband, you never know.”