Chapter 45:
After his speech, Vek had been too tired to move on. They set up camp where they were. It was daytime, technically, according to Vek’s daysclock, but the sun was on the other side of the planet, making it dark enough to fall asleep easily.
Several hours later, Vek awoke. He felt better – only a little feverish. He looked around to find Mayah sitting cross-legged against a tree trunk some paces away. Her face, lit up by the lambent breathflowers hanging on a nearby vine, was troubled.
Wondering if his outburst earlier had been too strong, Vek scooted over to her. He lay on his stomach, propping himself up by his elbows. “What’s wrong?”
“I was just thinking.”
Vek dug into his pocket and pulled out a food bar. “How many thoughts for this bar?”
A half-smile touched Mayah’s lips. “Are you a Xhota trader now?”
“I’ll be anything for you.”
She blushed. “I was just wondering who my parents were. I never thought about it before, but I have to have parents, right? All senior princesses give birth. Someone had to give birth to me. Do you think Sukren knows?”
“We can ask him when we get to him.”
“I guess.” Her eyes fell to the reddish soil under their feet. “I think I’m also trying to figure out what all this means. So the Free Serfs have the Dome Ring, now. Are the Free Serfs going to give it to Queen Pal or Queen Jroya – Sarana bless them – for the Night of the Dome, but only in exchange for something? The Night of the Dome isn’t for another season, so there’s time to work something out, but… what’s going to be worked out? I guess I just don’t understand. Why did we steal the Dome Ring again?”
There was no way Vek could answer any of these questions. Prophecy said that the Promised Daughter had to have the Dome Ring, but he couldn’t very well tell Mayah that.
“The Free Serfs don’t have the Dome Ring,” Vek finally said. “You do.”
Confusion flickered in her eyes. “I have the Dome Ring?”
“Yes,” Vek teased gently. “It’s in that pouch hanging from your belt, isn’t it?”
“So… what do I do with it?”
“I suggest you don’t put it on.”
A smile crossed Mayah’s face. She touched her bandaged finger. “I guess… I also just don’t understand what all this means about me. I mean… when I first read Sukren’s journal, I didn’t realize it was an organization, that it was the Free Serfs. I thought… I thought it was an idea that anybody could have. Like Rajas who weren’t happy with Rajas rule, and doctor-priests and regents too, not just serfs.”
“Doctor-priests and regents are serfs,” Vek replied. Good, he was glad he was getting another chance to correct this misunderstanding. Because it was important. It was on every exam Vek had ever taken. We must never act like doctor-priests and regents are not part of the larger serf body, the correct answer was. All of us, Chenta, Eenta and Xhota, doctor-priests and regents, we’re serfs. The Rajas tried to split us apart in order to better conquer us. We can’t let them win. “They’re serfs who were stolen from their families as children.”
Mayah was quiet. “I think Sukren thought that way too,” she finally said. “It’s not what they teach in the castles though. It’s not how they act in the castles, either.”
“But Rajas can be part of the Free Serfs still,” Vek continued, trying to get the words out quickly to combat the odd look on Mayah’s face. He didn’t want her to start thinking too deeply about what she had been taught in Lost Technology Castle. “Just like you said, Rajas who don’t like Rajas rule.”
“But isn’t the point of the Free Serfs to upend Rajas rule? To displace the Rajas from their position? How… how can I do that? That would mean I would be working to get rid of me.” She was laughing a little. “I would have to become a serf, or at least stop being Rajas in order to do that, right?”
Vek swallowed. He was almost certain that it was his speech on serf marriages that had brought on this bout of doubt. “Well, why not?” he said aloud. “Why couldn’t you become a serf? A true serf is one who hates Rajas rule and wants to see it ended. Isn’t that who you are?”
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“I guess.” She gave another little laugh. “I think I feel kind of tricked into it, for some reason. I didn’t know what I was getting into when I first came with you. But now that I’m here… well, I guess I’m here. It’s not like I have anything worth going back to.”
Now that made Vek wonder. What exactly had happened to Mayah in Lost Technology for her to view a Rajas life of comfort and privilege as worse than what she had now? Before he could think too deeply about it, however, Mayah was rising to her feet. “We should keep moving, right?” she asked.
Vek nodded. His heavy-headedness was back, and his missing finger was throbbing.
***
Mayah felt confused. She was dirtier than she had ever been before in her life, but she was happier too. It was better here, with Vek, on the way to Sukren. No one was glaring at her for breaking some unknown rule, or ordering her around, or pretending she didn’t exist. Vek treated her, well, like a princess.
And Mayah was a princess. Wasn’t she? Of course she was. Mayah was a Rajas, born and raised in a… well… she had lived in a castle, at least. She hadn’t been a very good princess, true, but the Eternal Queen Sarana’s blood ran through Mayah’s veins, and that was what made Mayah a Rajas.
Was she a traitor, then?
Feeling uneasy, Mayah reached down to touch the pouch tied to her belt. Vek’s words echoed back to her. Why couldn’t you become a serf? A true serf is one who hates Rajas rule and wants to see it ended. Isn’t that who you are?
Was that how Sukren saw her? As someone worth recruiting into the Free Serf movement? Or did he see her as a Rajas?
She felt a sting of self-contempt. Of course she was just a Rajas, just a princess, not anyone real, not anyone that mattered – an oppressor like the Rajas in Vek’s story about serf marriages. Otherwise Sukren would have told her about the Free Serfs earlier.
But Mayah hadn’t wanted to be a Rajas! She remembered that very clearly. She had wanted to go back to her serf village. Did that make her a true serf? Mayah couldn’t tell. She had wanted to go back to her village because everyone was nice to her there. It had felt warm and safe, not at all the way Vek’s and Hanjan’s stories made their villages sound. She wondered if her village had been different from the others somehow. But why would it have been?
Was it because of me?
Mayah’s brow was furrowed. Sukren’s journal had said he didn’t know why he had been told to raise Mayah in a serf village. But I’m glad it happened, he had written.
Maybe Sukren hadn’t told her about the Free Serfs earlier because he had been waiting for her to realize on her own how bad Rajas rule was. He had, after all, sent Vek to rescue her from getting disappeared like all the other Rajas. And he had written pages and pages about her in his notebook. Surely she meant something to him.
Even if she was a princess.
***
Vek’s head was pounding once more. Trying not to wince, he gestured at Mayah to follow him to the cluster of trees that encircled the crosspoint. Falling from the cluster’s branches was a curtain of breathflower vines. Vek pulled them aside for Mayah to duck through. Then, swallowing against the pain in his throat, he followed.
Inside the crosspoint was a Chenta woman. On the ground to her left was a roll of clothes. To her right was a pair of oversize net packs stuffed with fish. Open-mouthed, their blue sheens and red gills gleamed dimly in the flowerlight.
“Do you have what I need?” the woman asked him.
Vek had taken his knapsack back from Mayah; he slid it off his shoulders and handed it to the woman. “It’s at the bottom.”
The woman pulled the bundles out of his pack and unwrapped the bottom one in front of him. When she saw the Journals of the Lost Princess, she nodded, then reached into her pocket to pull out a set of booklets and passes. Vek felt unexpected relief wash through him. Traveling without identification had made him uneasier than he realized.
“Do you know where the rubber mat stall is?” the woman asked.
“No,” Vek answered.
“Tenth ring of the Xhota urb. About three quarters of the way down from the eastern edge of the quinter. When you get there, ask for Petrika. These fish go to her.”
She handed Vek the papers in her hand. He took them, and said, “I left a boat hidden outside the western entrance of Rubber Post #2.”
The woman nodded. “Watch out for mobile checkpoint units,” she told him. “They’re thick in this area.”
Only then, after there was no more information for her and Vek to share, did the woman look at Mayah. Vek watched as Mayah shied away from her gaze; it surprised him all over again to see how meek she was.
“Why is she wearing glasses?”
Vek knew what the woman meant. If a serf lacked perfect eyesight, or had any sort of disability, she was either culled in the Golden Castle’s endless efforts to keep the bio-dome’s population down – or she struggled along until it began hindering her ability to work, only to be culled then. Glasses were for Rajas, and for Rajas alone.
“She’ll take them off,” Vek replied.
“Good. You should also cut her hair.”
Vek looked at the Chenta woman. “What?”
“Her hair gives her away.”
“I… the knife is in the pack I gave you.”
The woman picked up the roll of clothes on the ground next to her and handed it to Vek. When he pulled the roll apart, two Industrilia servie uniforms emerged. The woman then opened Vek’s pack and pulled out the metal knife. Without speaking a word, she strode over to Mayah, who backed away. “Hold still,” the woman told her. With swift, decisive movements, the woman grabbed a handful of Mayah’s hair, lopped it off, and then did the same to another handful. Soon Mayah was peeking out from under a set of ragged bangs.
After she was done, the woman returned to Vek’s pack. She slid the knife back into its sheath, put the sheath back into his pack, then pulled the pack onto her shoulders.
“Remember, watch out for mobile checkpoint units,” she said again, and then she was gone.