A Darker Road

By Victoria Bitters and Jessica L Lim

The Inventors Guild and the Teraltian Government have declared victory over the terrible plague that spread across the lands. Every country of the continent has been affected by the illness, but the plague is - purportedly - now being cleansed. The Guild's fearsome creatures lumber through quarantined cit

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dex Greenbright
• Release date: Jun 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781088034309

Book preview

Safe Journey

By Victoria Bitters

When the sickness came, shriveling the weak and shattering the strong, Zelia and Monjee’s parents put them on the family boat and launched them into Yaim’allelo’s realm. Zelia was reminded of the funeral ritual for their grandfather, when he was wrapped in waxed leaves and sent skimming across the surface of the waters at sunset.

To D’alor’s bedchamber, to the couches Deep Yaim’allelo keeps ready for those who have served well, their father had whispered. Their mother sipped a mouthful of sweetened perfume, like the oil that Grandfather’s body had soaked in for four days before being wrapped, and sprayed it out in a shushing mist over the water. Zelia and Monjee flung nets full of hard clay balls into which had been packed seeds and berries – the symbols of life on land. They were meant as gifts for unfathomable Yaim’allelo, that which could not be found in the sea, and whatever was left would be for Grandfather to savor as treats and memories of his time above the waves.

Now, in the family’s boat, Zelia watched the shore recede and their parents cling to each other.

Safe journey! little Monjee shrieked, shivering in the closing dark. Zelia wanted to snap that that was what their parents were supposed to call to them, though to what destination they were meant to go she did not know. But watching her parents recede into the shadows, Zelia felt as if the adults were the ones departing after all.

Safe journey, she cried. Safe journey!

They drifted for most of three days before seeing another boat. During those days, Monjee and Zelia ate the hard loaves that their parents had pushed into their hands, wrapped in waxed fronds – Grandfather skimming across the water – and stretched their oiled cloaks across the narrower end of the boat to shield themselves from the hot, dispassionate gaze of D’alor. The other boat was captained by Tira, one of the few female heads of house in their village. Tira had her two minnows with her, both younger than Monjee.

Tira did not call out to them and Zelia felt the wariness that had seized all of Shunnira as tales of the sickness came only a breath before the scourge itself. She did not call out to Tira either. Neither boat tried to move farther away from the other, however – not that this was much under Zelia or Monjee’s control. Their parents had used the long steering paddles to launch them, leaving only the smaller docking oars in the boat, with which no one would expect to persuade true waves and currents. No way back but tide and time and Yaim’allelo’s deep mercy.

After another day of flat, brackish water and increasingly tooth-threatening bread, Tira silently paddled her boat closer. Zelia sat up and watched her, holding Monjee’s hand tightly.

* * *

Ey, you live, the older woman rasped out a weak chuckle. Her little ones – Mara and Gari, Zelia remembered suddenly – jerked at the sound of her voice, clinging to her salt-stained cloak. The minnows’ own smaller cloaks had been stretched across two poles (which Zelia could now see were a rake and a hoe, their ends wedged under several boxes) to shelter them from the sun.

It took Zelia a long while to clear her throat, swallowing the heavy dryness that felt like she’d been eating sand instead of bread over the past four days.

Yes. And you, Zelia managed. Tira hmphed.

"Course we do. I sail out every day, have spent nights out here when the waters – blessed though they be – they all gestured an offering hand toward the Deep, were too dangerous to approach the harbor. You minnows? Hah! Where are your parents?" She craned her head as if expecting to see them crouched in some corner of the boat not previously inspected.

Monjee hunched in on himself and Zelia swallowed again.

They stayed. Her words were nearly a growl and the anger in them startled her, but she didn’t let that show. As Yaim’allelo held secrets, hidden beneath an impenetrable surface, so would she.

Tira nodded solemnly.

Can you row?

Stung, Zelia pulled herself up straighter. What villager couldn’t manage so much? The casting of nets, the baling of bilges, the paddling of a boat – these were taught early and if minnows were too small yet to have the strength for these tasks, they still knew them. Monjee straightened himself, too, watching his sister out of the corner of his eye, following her lead.

Yes. Course. Tira raised an eyebrow at the clipped reply, but nodded again. She tucked her minnows behind her and used her oar to turn the boat, heading parallel to the shoreline, away from Zelia and Monjee’s boat. Zelia tried not to panic, not to feel abandoned all over again. Tira had no responsibility to them, not with two even smaller minnows all her own.

Zelia looked down, dragging out one of the two short oars which had hidden in the bottom of the boat for several days, ignored as too pitiful a tool against the breadth and depth of Yaim’allelo’s ocean. Monjee took up the other and looked at her expectantly. She took a deep breath, pushed all her worries into a dark corner of her mind and nudged her brother into place beside her, so that they would pull together. To what destination she didn’t know.

Before Zelia could flounder much, Tira’s voice reeled her in.

Well, come now! I know you have no practice, but you must keep up! Zelia jerked her head around, to see Tira watching over one shoulder, her minnows peeping out through the back of their makeshift canopy. Waiting for them to follow? Zelia squelched the hope with more difficulty than the panic, but nodded exaggeratedly, not willing to risk her voice revealing her again. Turning back to Monjee, she held his gaze.

I will protect you, she whispered. His eyes grew wide, but Monjee nodded.

Me too. I will protect you, too. Zelia let him see the corner of her mouth curve up, then jerked her chin toward his side of the boat.

Row. Row. Row. Row…

* * *

Following Tira was hazardous, tiring, and very, very boring. Monjee was strong for his size, but the paddle was too heavy for him, until Zelia rigged an oarlock out of one of her bracelets. She apologized to Yaim’allelo under her breath. She hoped the god took no insult from her rough treatment of one of the tokens showing whose Way she followed. The waters stayed calm and nothing rose from below to devour them.

Still, even with the two of them pulling together with all their strength, they fell farther and farther behind Tira’s boat. Every now and again they would see her in the distance, sometimes rowing, sometimes stopped and watching them. The siblings never stopped to rest, though Zelia switched seats with her weaker little brother – twisting another token into another oarlock with another apology to Yaim’allelo – every so often to correct their course, zig-zagging across the waters.

It was almost dark again when they started to see other shapes beyond Tira’s boat, just cresting a low wave a quarter of a league ahead of them. As the shadows grew from every corner and D’alor’s brighter eye sank closed, Zelia realized that she was shaking from the exertion of the day.

Look, Monjee whispered so softly Zelia almost didn’t hear him over the murmur and smack of the sea. Following his gaze, she saw the increasingly indistinct smudge of Tira’s boat… and something else.

Not land – everyone knew the hazy shape of land came at you suddenly after emerging slowly from the distance. These shapes hunkered low and near. They bobbed and moved with the waves, like Tira’s boat, like their own boat. It took a long, weary moment for that thought to coalesce. More boats. More refugees?

The word that had first sprung to mind, like a vicious thorn branch released suddenly, was survivors. Zelia shoved that thought, too, into the now crowded dark corner of her mind. Let it scrape against all the other frettings and panic she’d been rejecting today.

It was well dark before they came close enough to hear Tira chivvying the other boats. There were few responses as the crafts maneuvered around each other. But Zelia could also see dark lines interrupting the glimmer of D’alor’s dimmer eye on Yaim’allelo’s face.

Nets! Monjee hissed, pressing himself against her side. Nets meant food, meant fetching the Deep god’s slippery gifts from the water. The work and the eating of fish were both a prayer and a promise, that those who took from the sea would return to it themselves, in time.

But these nets were strung tight above the water, holding the boats together, even as they moved. How could they not become hopelessly tangled? Zelia squinted one eye shut, tipping her head to try and see just one strand in the dark. As if in aid, the heavy clouds that had been crowding out most of the night’s light split away for a moment, revealing the web.

Not nets… more like the frame before a net is crafted. Thick ropes that would hold the edges of a net ran from boat to boat. Thinner, more flexible cords made up the cross lines that would catch struggling fish. Here and there, Zelia could see that these lengths had been nets. Little strands dangled down from individual ropes, where they had been cut.

A cut line was a curse.

Zelia and Monjee instinctively pulled back from the rope that appeared before them, flung from a boat no more than two man-lengths away, nearer than Tira had come to them. It splashed in the water and Zelia heard a muttered oath against eel-fingered minnows.

Catch it this time! a man grunted. Full darkness came rushing back with the clouds as Zelia glanced toward Tira’s boat. The older woman surely couldn’t see the gesture, but she called out to them all the same.

It’s just a rope, she grumbled. Perhaps she understood because her voice took on the timbre of the teacher imparting a vital lesson. It can be a net again with mending, but for now it’s your life. Your line, tying you to us and us to you, so we all make it through. More harshly, This is how it is now.

Keep up, echoed from earlier that day. And, unspoken, Grow up.

Zelia could just barely see the outline of the man throwing again. She flung out her arms, rocking the boat as she reached for the rope. Monjee raised a hand as well, though he kept one for clinging to his oar. It took three more throws and, in the end, Zelia managed to haul the cord in by using her oar as a very inefficient boat hook.

By dawn, Zelia and Monjee’s boat was tied at the prow and aft to two other boats and they had been hauled into a rough circle. Tira’s boat, those of three others Zelia recognized, and two strange boats moved about in the center of the group. The occupants hauled on the ropes that connected them as much as they used their paddles to maneuver. One of the unfamiliar boats was crewed by a well-baked and brine-preserved older man, so pickled that Zelia could only guess his age as somewhere between forty and eighty. He grinned far too widely and winked broadly at Zelia and Monjee as he offered them small skeins of inland water – with a sour tang to it that made Zelia think the skein had been previously used to store brew, it was nothing she would call fresh – and new rocks masquerading as bread.

You minnows here by youselves, hah? he tutted in elaborate disapproval. Monjee jutted out his little chin and Zelia felt heat rise in her face. She held her spine stiff and stared at the man until he stopped smiling.

No. We are here together.

* * *

Another four grueling days passed.

The pathetic supplies handed out came in smaller amounts by the day, though Zelia saw the six boats at the center and some of the larger boats around the perimeter cast out nets and even bring in a few shining fish. The minnows were not offered any meat. Zelia had no illusions about her and Monjee’s ability to cast and draw into their boat a net with even one miraculously confused fish. Better to save the net for whatever would come next. Surely this floating tedium was not the goal. The adults must have a plan.

It suddenly occurred to Zelia that she should be making her own plans.

Glancing around as surreptitiously as she could manage, she noted the weary gesturing of those at the center as they conferred again. Zelia had heard them arguing last night. The food would not last much longer. The water, carefully, tricklingly hoarded, was gone. Tira and two others among the center group agree on a decision that they did not refer to directly. The other three – Adosez, the sour-toned smith; a self-important merchant named Haipa; and a woman who was a stranger – opposed them, arguing that whatever Tira wanted to do was too dangerous.

Adosez wanted to stay joined in this flotilla, setting the strong to catching fish as much as possible. The others sneered and asked where they would