Folded Earth

  Contents

  Chapter 1 – The Council

  Chapter 2 – The Maze

  Chapter 3 – The Locks

  Chapter 4 – The Maiden

  Chapter 5 – The Lock-Maker King

  Chapter 6 – The Rebuff

  Chapter 7 – The Book

  Chapter 8 – The Onus

  Chapter 9 – The Inquiry

  Chapter 10 – The Consensus

  Chapter 11 – The Admission

  Chapter 12 – The Inferno

  Epilogue

  Folded Earth by Tracy Eire

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the author-publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  Copyright © 2018Tracy Eire

  Chapter 1 – The Council

  Several miles from burgeoning Bridge Township rose some of the harshest foothills in the world. They were next to impassable, which had safeguarded the growing town from Northern approach all of its life. The stony labyrinth, which much resembled discarded wooden blocks in a child’s toy-box, was run through by the might of Wild River as it flowed from the highlands. This rumbling giant spread its fingers like a delta through the burgeoning town.

  Ora watched the waters now in the turmoil of a distributary churning in the deep furrows it had cut through soil into the rock of the town.

  Five rivers came through the Township to unite downhill in Green Mirror – the great mother lake, whose serpentine river of egress was the trade-route through woods and savanna, from Township to Portston. Each of the rivers that fed the Green Mirror had a size and depth that defined their characters, wild or mild, no different than people.

  But without the regrets of people.

  Ora Buckmaster threw scraps of bread into the crushing arms of the river beside her. Offerings of bread and wine were often made here in the hopes that the river wouldn’t demand any more children. Never mind that she thought it superstitious bunk. She did it just in case.

  She knew about this place and its unspoiled day-by-day life, and because she didn’t stay in them long, she didn’t often get to know places. She chucked bread into the river more angrily now.

  “Incoming horses, Ora.” One of the stable boys shouted from the front of the barn. “Stop feeding that glutton.”

  She went to tend to the horses.

  It was a job reserved for young boys in these parts. But the owner of these expansive stables had taken her on as he had a limited number of other young women. Since then, she’d come to understand that he’d planned to seduce her. But his fumbled attempts at exercising power over her were beneath her notice. She had patience for the horses, though. They were soothing.

  She walked out to the courtyard and took in the tall lady in fineries who rode side-saddle. Like many of these Township folk, she had blonde hair and snowy skin. Her cheeks were flushed with wind. She sucked an unsteady breath. “Seems to be some hubbub on the Highlands.” She looked for the nearest boy in the crowd, as did the several riders with her, all of whom boarded their horses here.

  Ora took the bridle carefully in hand. “I’ll take care of your horse.”

  “You?” the girl’s face screwed up and she looked over her shoulder at the young men who had ridden out with her. “Is this girl to care for my horse?”

  “She is miss,” answered an older stable boy, Arnitz, as if he’d been asked.

  The girl gave up and accepted the help of one of her men, getting down from her horse. She walked away without a backward glance after that and Ora took over care of the horse and tack. The bay reared a little when Ora walked the heat out of him. His brown eyes rolled until white could be seen around their edges.

  “More trouble in the Highlands,” Arnitz said as he walked a long-legged gray beside her.

  “We have the Bridge Township Guardsmen and the Outriders for that.”

  “The Guard and the Wolves, you mean?” he asked innocently.

  Ora was from the High North. There was no such thing as calling an Outrider a Wolf in her parts, but that was the only name they went by down here. Considered wild mercenaries for hire, unprincipled and harsh, they were warriors and raiders out of another age, bound by a different covenant than the gentlefolk to the Low North and Southern lands. In this tinker-town she’d learned that to call Outriders anything but Wolves was to confess yourself. She was of that same ilk. But Arnitz was mature compared to the other boys, and almost her age. He was patient with her, and, though a Londh, was like a good Wolf in that he told no tales.

  His voice was low and private. “The Northern Wolves… are they able to deal with the Warp on the Highlands, Miss Ora?”

  “They are.” She knew that to be true.

  “And… and they’re not here for plunder?”

  “I don’t speak for all Wolves, Arnitz,” she cautioned, and then added. “All warriors are for plunder, if there are spoils to be had.”

  She cooled the horse down and stabled him. Then she sat washing the leather saddles and bridles of the riders. Raised to work, and to cleaning, and stronger than most of the boys, she often had this mindless task. She could carry it out wherever she liked, which, presently, was seated on a hay bale beside the river. She rubbed leather soap into saddle and hummed to herself as she watched the big river beside her.

  She paused, exhaled the entrant warmth, and parodied a Northern walking song. “I, a Northern woman, take no Southerly descent / I ramp upon the tundra deep, the icicles my tent / All Northern women strong and loud / upon the mountains tall and proud / come see this lowly beggar rubbing saddles for her rent.” She hummed bright, melodic bars, but sang again at the end. “This is who I am now / This is who I am.”

  Then she stared a while, saddles and bridles done, to listen to the laugher of children across the water, and the clop of hooves and wagons above the din of midday citizens abroad. She looked at her fingers on the leather soap and told herself, “This is who I am now.” Her lips compressed.

  “Ora – horses coming!” Arnitz shouted. His voice was dim from where she sat. She set the soap into its pouch, dipped her hands in the icy water she’d drawn from the River, and dried off in a saddle cloth as she headed back inside.

  “Guards.” One of the smaller boys said.

  “Get up out of the way,” Ora admonished him with short-tempered practicality. “They ride in tens and twelves, and you’re too small. Get or you’ll be trampled.”

  He didn’t move quickly enough, so she caught him up and set him on top of the gate. Whoever had thought that it was a good idea to send a child that small to work was either delusional or starving. She glanced over him, and four more like him, fearful, clustered behind the open gate, and Ora couldn’t help but sigh. “Want will be your master.”

  “Be careful Miss Ora,” belled the boy she’d tucked away. He had a high and pretty voice.

  “Out of the way!” blustered the Captain who arrived into the clay courtyard and turned his horse around with a yank of his reins. It crabbed sideways into Ora. She caught hold of the saddle the man sat in, front and back, and hopped when the horse threw out a long hind leg.

  Though she was off in an instant, the rider shoved her aside with his stirrup and boot. He bit at her, “Do I look like I have time for you?”

  “Apologies, sir,” she called out to him as he got off of his horse. The riders in here numbered eight, she noticed at the same time. When he was on the clay, she stepped forward for his horse. The animal reared, and, fed up with antics, he grabbed the reins and yanked hard.

  A shrill whinny of pain made all the other mounts mill anxiously.

  “There’s no need. There’s no need, sir.” Ora called. “Let her go if you will. This yard is closed off. I’ll fetch her.” She cau
ght one of his hands upon the reins, and he glanced over his shoulder and elbowed her across the mouth.

  Ora reeled away.

  “This is my mare, is it not?” He turned her way and growled. “A slattern of the stable-master should not touch the likes of me!”

  “Of course not,” Ora’s bloody lips twisted. It was two quick steps to cover the ground between them before she let sail her right fist. She connected with his face, and the sound of his jaws ricocheting shut warmed the cold places inside of her a little bit. He slammed down on the clay of the yard like a sack of wheat.

  His horse bolted a few steps, and Ora let her. The horse simply rejoined the others among the troop and huddled there.

  “I’ll be sure,” Ora wiped her bloody lips in her sleeve, “to tell any slatterns I see… but I know enough of them to say they’d never want the likes of you without a pretty penny.”

  When she turned, she saw a large number of armed men staring at her in disbelief. Arnitz took the Captain’s horse in one hand and another with his second, wide-eyed.

  A soldier leaned toward her, horrified. “Miss, he’ll have you horse-whipped.”

  A jolt of cold rushed through her veins and Ora backed away.

  “No, run,” the same man told her. “Don’t be here when he wakes!”

  Arnitz handed off the reins he held, caught hold of Ora’s elbow, and steered her through the stables without a word. He rushed through the cloak-room, took down her threadbare cape, and shoved it at her. “Do you need some food for the next hours, Ora?”

  “Don’t fuss.” She told him, but her voice was pale.

  He gave her the hunk of cheese and bread he had for himself. “Do not come back before tomorrow morning. I’ll talk to Mr. Hedgewove, okay? And it wouldn’t hurt you to be kind and smile at him when you get back. If you do.” He hustled her out the back of the stables just as shouting started in the front.

  Ora’s bloody teeth flashed, “Don’t let that ruffian touch you, Arn.”

  He pressed a clean cloth to her face and frowned. “I’m sorry, Ora. Now run.”

  Then he shut and bolted the back door used by the hands here. She stood outside for a moment, a long moment. Then clocked her head on the wood in defeat.

  She headed away from the stables alone and ambled through town with her little bag of bread and cheese and some small coinage. This allowed her to grab chicken bones and some meager vegetables for the pot. The way across town was thick with carriages and men moving dung to be carted out to the fields. She was outside of the limits of the city, though not in the sad shanties that dotted the banks of the Silken. She was further still, in the shadow of the wood, in a tent.

  Outrider guards stood at the perimeter and didn’t stir as she passed. Here were the so called ‘Northern Wolves’ with their yurt tents and their airborne wood-cage caches draped in drying furs and full of birds or braces of rabbit. Things were organized in an Outrider camp. The tents were staggered to offer cover, and there was no mess to be seen lying around. The smell of food wafted. Bread. There were some Wolves here, even in the day.

  She was just inside the forest, under towering trees. Ora’s tent was dyed to match the evergreen that surrounded it. It had been white before they’d come down from the mountains, and she well-missed those days. It was too early for her to be back.

  She lifted the tent flap.

  There was only one person inside. He lay on bedding stretched beyond the narrow yurt-stove, flat on his back, throwing a woven ball in air and catching it with the same hand. When he heard the flap flip aside, he sat up and drew a dagger.

  “Put it down. We’re not in the killing fields now, Airic.” She told him as she walked in.

  He chucked the blade into the tree stump they’d built around and used as a table. He rubbed his blue eyes and blinked, “Yes, well, if you’ve got all the answers today, what are you doing back?”

  She laid down the supplies she’d bought on the table – actually bound planks of wood laid atop carefully piled stones. She fussed with a turnip, “I might have lost my situation.”

  Airic threw his hands up in air when he saw her. “Yay!”

  Ora threw a sack of onions at him. “No, you scat. No.”

  They fell into silence in the yurt tent in which they lived. After a moment, and considerably more quietly, Airic said, “Yay.” He picked at a loose onion skin as she set out the bread and cheese.

  “It’s… disappointing,” she told him. She was frustrated with herself.

  There was a long story between these two, between Ora Buckmaster and Airic Awns. That story went back three years, ninety days. With so much time, it was impossible to go back to the days when Airic Awns had been some young brawler who’d crossed her path. For someone with such a sour reputation, he’d been level-headed in person. Blessed with a hale body, strong and vicious whether armed or not, he still had the indefatigable elasticity of youth. Some purpose had made him better than good. She knew what it was now. His twin.

  “Where’s Icari?” she set out the bread and cheese and picked up a knife reserved for cooking and cutting up food. “Come and eat some of this.”

  “He’s working.”

  She gritted her teeth, “How the Fires can he be working?” The cheese jumped apart on the wood planks with a crack, she’d brought down the knife so hard. “Here I am, and I can’t manage to keep at a job for longer than a few weeks.”

  Airic sat down on one of the tree stump seats and looked up at her. “Let me ask you something, Ora. Does your dismissal from… what were you doing this time?”

  “Stables.” She said.

  “Did your dismissal from the stables have something to do with your bloody mouth?”

  She reached up and gingerly touched her fattened lip. “Somewhat.”

  Airic tore the heel off the segmented loaf of bread and smeared some of the baggy of white cheese onto it, “What about the other guy?”

  She daubed blood from her lip. “I hit him in the mouth and he took a nap.”

  “Ah,” he smiled and nodded at her. “Okay. So, that’s good, at least.” He offered her the bread and pointed at the kettle on the yurt stove. “There’s tea. Should still be warm.” Then he went and poured for them both.

  Ora sat on a stump with a cloth to her mouth. The tea burned and the first swallows tasted of blood, but then, few things were much of a comfort to her these last months.

  Airic nodded. “I hate getting hit in the face. After that… everything you have to do hurts.” His words were rueful. She remembered one of the best things about travelling with a band of Outriders was that there were moments of compassion somewhere in the world.

  They ate in silence. It hurt. And when the tent flap moved, Ora pulled a fighting knife as along as her forearm from its hiding place, strapped under the table, and she spun up to the ready. Beside her, Airic snickered. “Icari, if that’s you, speak now?”

  “It’s Redd,” came the boom of his jovial reply.

  At that point, Redd, who more closely resembled a giant than a man, crouched down, squeezed his muscle-smothered bones through the door, and rose up so that his head brushed pine branches overhead. Always with him, there was a moment where one nearly heard a flourish because he’d accomplished something that, for a normal sized man, would be of no particular note. He stood smiling. “Well, I didn’t expect-”

  He truly saw Ora and his happy mood vanished. It was saying something, Ora realized, because when you were as large as an Ice Bear, no one wanted to spoil your mood. There were ways. One could elbow his best friend in the face. “What happened, Ora?” He scurried up to her like a fretful cat, except very much larger.

  “I will need a new situation.” She told him.

  “Why? Did you fall and do yourself harm? Are you bad at this job?” he turned to Airic. “What is she doing, Airic?”

  “Stables.”

  “You’re good with horses, Ora,” his fist popped off the planks and his face reddened. “Who said you wer
en’t good with horses?!”

  With the tent flap open, it was no trouble to see the young Outriders next door sprint away.

  It hurt to smile. “Redd, you’re scaring the locals.”

  He forced himself to breathe and hunched against the table. “What happened to you?”

  “A man called me a slattern and hit me.” She noted. “I dropped him on the dirt. However, it’s likely I also dropped my position there.”

  “You can’t go hunting for work looking like…” Redd reached out a hand and tipped her head up a little. He might have covered her entire face with that paw, but he was, in fact, a gentle soul at heart. “My, he did a job. Do you know his name?” He tipped her head and went for the small kit of expensive salves.

  “No need,” she told him.

  “Let him,” Airic said without looking at her. He filled a cup with tea for Redd instead. “And he’s right. You can’t go job hunting with a split lip and bruised…” his blue eyes darted up, “unless you want to do a certain type of job.”

  “I can take her to the Council yard where I work. No combat involved, so far. They were happy to have someone with experience at the gate.” Redd jabbed a finger upward in air, “It’s important to appear intimidating.”

  Airic started to smile, “That describes you perfectly.” He suffered a shove from Redd’s massive hand that tipped the stump on which he sat. Airic, used to the huge man, simply stood up as it happened and righted the stump under him again.

  By then Redd had started to attend to her bruises and the cut in her lip. “I’m rusty.”

  “Don’t do that,” Airic started to clear up the table. “Everyone gets hit. That’s what a sucker punch is, Ora. It happens.”

  It took a few minutes to clean up her lip, accomplished with an application of ‘healer’s’ honey after cleaning the cut with alcohol. Sweetness flooded her mouth and she sat back, contented in spite of the pain in her face. “Anyone know how Icari is doing?”

  Both Redd and Ora looked at Airic. “I don’t even understand what Icari is doing,” his twin admitted.

  Redd closed his hands together and chuckled. “I do.”