Alexandria (8 page)

“Let’s see, I think I might have a little something for you.” She rummages on a shelf against the side wall and pulls down a little basket full of honey drizzled sweet rolls and distributes them around. “Here you go, darling.”

She hands a roll to Phoebe, a quiet little waif, who takes it politely and starts nibbling. Lia smells hers first, still leery, and ventures a small bite. It is better than anything she has ever tasted.

“Go ahead and show the girls around, Calyn. They’ve probably never seen a kitchen this big before.”

The kitchen takes up an entire upper corner of the Temple, laid entirely in stone, with several rotund chimneys protruding up through the ceiling. A row of giant open-faced ovens line the wall, two with fires burning and hogs rolling on mounted spits. At the far end are several squat, round ovens, each with mortared vents rising from their tops. On the other side of the island, along the outer wall, is a trough for washing, fed by two wooden pipes fitted with stopcocks. Calyn brings them to the center of the room.

“All right, well, this is where all the cooking gets done. That’s about it.” She laughs wildly at this. “Sorry, now, these are the ovens, and these are the pigs we’re roasting for dinner. Smells good, hmm?”

The girls circle around to watch the shiny brown carcasses spin lazily in the flames.

“Here is for soup,” she says, smacking the side of a heavy iron kettle tucked in the corner. “In these small ovens we bake our bread, and over here, look at this,” she moves to the trough and turns the handle on one of the stopcocks and water splashes out of the pipe. “Bet you never seen running water before.”

The girls look quizzically at the flowing pipe, still chewing on their rolls.

“You’re a quiet lot, aren’t you?”

“They’re tired,” Ezbeth says apologetically. “They only just got in yesterday and we’ve been walking the gardens all morning.”

“Oh, I see, well maybe you’ll get a little nap. Anyway, through here is the storage, and that door goes to the prep room.”

Beyond the wide arch they see scullery girls standing around a long table, peeling and chopping vegetables.

“We’ll have two of you in here,” says Ezbeth, “Lia and Haylen, you’ll meet Calyn tomorrow morning to start work. Phoebe, Jeneth, and Eleta, you’re going to be in the sewing shop downstairs, and the rest of you will come with me and I’ll teach you how to be housemaids. Not bad duties, girls. It’s certainly better than the quarry.”

“Is this why you brought us here?” asks Lia.

“What’s that, dear?”

“To make us work for you? Is that why you stole us?”

Ezbeth giggles. “Sweetie, we didn’t steal you. We saved you.”

“You sent bad people to kill our parents.”

The slap comes hard and fast, knocking a string of spit out of Lia’s mouth and leaving her jaw slack and trembling.

“You watch it, little girl.
My son is one of those men. They’ve done more to protect us than you could possibly imagine and I will not tolerate that kind of garbage.”

Lia rubs her chin and precious little tears roll down her cheeks.

“I’ve given you good work, Lia. Don’t ruin it for yourself.”

First thing in the morning the children attend their lessons. They learn about their beloved King. They learn that he is one of nearly one hundred and sixty children fathered by Nezra the First, that he was born only days after the fire that ravaged their settlement, and how his uniquely colored eyes are an omen, proof of his otherworldly origins, sent here from the Beyond to protect his family in the flesh, that without him the Rain of Fire will return and retribution will crash down upon them from angry skies. The native children, born of the Temple, chant songs and recite invocations about Nezra the Second, their protector, thanking him for warding off the destruction.

Jack, Braylon and Aiden meet with Karus after their lessons to begin their trek to the quarry. Karus leads a slope-backed horse, saddled with their gear, and they walk along beside her, leaving the Temple grounds by a dirt road that cuts through the foothills and winds north. Stone and wood outbuildings are situated just beyond the grounds, a small manufacturing district with glass and metalworks. A handful of men trudge along behind them, heading off to a day’s work. They pass farmholds set into the gentle hillside in ascending tiers, with workers, many of them children, moving about the rows and turning the soil. Beyond them lay the stables and training fields.

Jack startles with instinctive fear when he sees the pack of wolves running the fields, their snouts furrowed into snarls exposing pink and black gums and sharp rows of yellow teeth. They leap on the men and scamper at their feet, and make no move to rip out their throats or tear at the flesh of their arms and legs. Here these mean creatures seem to suppress those primal urges and the boys have never seen a lot more tame.

Some of the men journeying with them Jack knows to be warriors, but they are wearing simple clothes and only a couple of them bear weapons openly. They have cycled out of their training regimen and are being sent to the quarry to keep up their strength breaking rocks. One of the men is Halis, and Jack knows him well. He is the man whose ruthless stare kept him company for that long week he spent in his cage. He is the man whose brother Jack killed with an arrow while his village turned to ash around him.

“You boys do hard work before?” asks Karus.

“We’ve helped dig,” says Aiden.

“Well, that’ll help. None of you looks too strong, though. We’ll change that. You’ll go to bed tired, I promise you.”

The signs of Temple life fade away and they travel onward, the broad path underfoot curving through fields of billowing grass, a few odd crooked buildings poking through here and there, slanting and cracked like large tombstones. The countryside seems to have been sculpted specially to accommodate the road they are walking, and the terraforming doesn’t look to be a recent job. Pieces of hill are sliced away to allow the road’s passage, and these areas are much overgrown with weeds and straggly pines.

“Gonna be a long walk, boys, relax and enjoy the view.”

Karus takes on conversation with a couple of the plain-clothed warriors, and Jack falls in with Braylon and Aiden.

“So what happened to you the other night?”

“They took me to a room underneath the Temple,” says Braylon, his jaw tense, “and they put me in a hole in the ground and locked me there.”

“Did they hurt you?”

“No, they didn’t touch me. But it was dark and freezing. I could hear… people breathing.” Braylon swallows hard and squints off toward the distance.

“What did Nisaq tell you? Did he threaten to kill you?”

“No.” Braylon collects his thoughts. “He told me that if I played by the rules, I could be a great man someday.”

The boys walk in silence and turn this over in their minds.

“What do you think he meant by
that?”

“I didn’t ask.”

They stop after a while and eat a cold lunch by the side of the road. In the distance ahead, a white angular shape emerges over the horizon.

“Here’s the crew now,” says Karus.

They finish eating and move forward, and as they get closer they see two dozen men fighting the massive stone block, pulling the ropes wound around it, grunting and heaving in the noonday sun. The block is lashed to a huge sledge that rolls slowly over the track of logs laid out in parallel on the road, and as the block passes over the rear of the track the workers lift the heavy logs and carry them to the front and lay them down at the head of the line, creating a perpetual conveyer for the enormous sandstone to move upon. The men grit their teeth and flexed tendons stand out on their arms.

“Hold
. Straighten her up.”

Men hunker low and reposition the log as the groaning stone hulk bears down upon it, pressing into the hard-packed ground as it rolls. Their progress is painfully slow.

“New recruits?” yells the apparent foreman.

“Three for now,” says Karus.

“We can use them. See you back there in a few days. Have fun breaking rocks.” The foreman laughs and sets his attention back on his tremendous burden.

“Don’t mind him, it’s not a bad as it seems. At least you get to work outside.”

This is cold comfort to the three boys, and as they walk they keep snatching glances at the monumental stone snailing away over the hill. Each block in the Temple had to be moved in just this fashion, it occurs to them. Eventually it recedes from sight and they turn back to the road ahead.

“I see you keep looking at the old mare here,” Karus says to Jack.

“She’s pretty.”

Karus laughs at this. “She’s old and broken down, boy, not much use for anything but this. You want to hold her reins for a while?”

“Yes.”

He runs up to take the leather lead in his hands and the mare looks at him with big doleful eyes.

“Just hold her steady, she’ll follow you.”

“Does she bite?”

“No, been known to kick a little though. Don’t get right behind her. Give her a little pat, there, let her know you’re her friend.”

Jack strokes his hand along her thick, trunk-like neck and she snorts softly through wide nostrils.
“Hello there,”
he whispers to her. She lowers her head and huffs and Jack leads her on the rest of the way, and as the fiery colors of evening spread over the countryside they see ahead of them the great cavernous quarry. The crews are winding down for the night, gathering around a small encampment and heating stew in a big black pot slung over the fire. They whoop and beat on pans as Karus and the boys approach.

“Look at the little boy leading old Karus by a leash!”

“Shut up,” yells Karus.

They roar with laughter and get up to meet the new hands.

“Be nice, we have company here. Men, this is Jack, Aiden, and Braylon.” Karus points to each boy as he names them and the crew nods and extends brief salutations. Next he unties the bundles draped over the longsuffering mare and they fall to the ground with a thud. The crew is up, parsing through the packages to see what food and supplies they were sent.

“I thought they were going to send us out some fruit… or some bread. We had nothing but old soup here for the last week.”

“Stop crying or I’ll bring you nurse milk.”

“I’ll take it.”

“Here, Jack, see that row of posts over there? Take her on over and tie her up for the night. Halis, show Jack how to tie her up. And get her some water and grain.”

“All right,” says Halis. “Come on, Jack.”

Jack’s feet turn to lead on the ground as he looks into those familiar bitter eyes.

“Problem, Jack?”

“No.”

Jack follows to the side of the shelter, leading the mare, and watches with apprehension as Halis takes the lead and loops a tight knot around the post.

“Like this,” he says, “nice and tight. Water is over here.”

Halis goes around the corner and motions for Jack to follow him. Cold fear clenches him and he looks furtively to Aiden and Braylon. Their attention is with the crew and they don’t notice.

“Come on, Jack, let’s go.”

He steps around the corner, where Halis is dipping water out of a barrel into a wooden bucket. When it’s full he holds it out to Jack.

“Here, take it.”

As he reaches for it, Halis shoots a hand up and clenches it around his throat and the water spills all over his clothes. He tries to breathe and a thin retching sound comes out.

“You took my brother,” Halis says icily. “You ruined it.” Jack wheezes and looks at him with huge round pupils. Halis belts him in the stomach.
“Don’t you speak a word of this, do you understand?”

Jack squeezes a small affirmative noise out of this burning throat and Halis relents.

“Good.”

Away up on the Temple’s flattened apex, under the intermittent shade of the slatted redwood terrace, Arana leans with his elbows resting against the balustrade and gazes out at the expansive grounds and reflecting pool. His followers move about far below like figurine miniatures, walking off to their homes or work or lounging around the pool as if posing for a portrait session. Arana tilts his mug and empties its contents, then holds it out and shakes it with a slight flick of his wrist. A stunning young beauty rises from the divan and carries over a decorated clay carafe and pours his mug full of pale wine.