Chapter 111: Wind Speed

Book 3, Chapter 10 - Wind Speed

Eksa wondered what would have been worse. To have been sold, or remain in the captivity of the slave trading couple that still had possession of her. They'd long since passed through the city of Grace —which was now open to slavery since the Empire had come into power. No one wanted to buy a girl as young as her. No one except for sleazy eyed men whom her captors declined. They called that decency. It was easy to be barely decent when your livelihood depended on acts of cruelty and indecency.

Juuls, the female slaver, unlocked the gates to the caged wagon, beckoning for the three remaining slaves to come out. Nine there'd been when Eksa had been captured. Five were sold at Grace. One at the last village they'd passed through. All that remained was a mute, and a shrivelled old man with a limp. And me .

The wagon had been parked near a river. Rillin, Juuls' partner, stood by with a whip at his belt. He kept a wary eye on the defective slaves while lengthy chains were bound to each prisoner's ankle. The mute stepped out without a word. Obviously. The old man stepped out, stumbling once his cracked bare feet touched the ground. Eksa walked to the edge next, shuffling her feet against the dirty wooden boards of the wagon. Her boots had been sold off. Same as her coat. All she had was a shirt, her trousers, and her cutlass.

Eksa feigned defeat, trying to garner sympathy from her captors. Surely they felt something for keeping a nine year old girl in a cage. Neither Juuls nor Rillin changed their expression. She eyed the whip at Rillin's belt. Her eyes then flickered to the other slaves. A whip for a mute and a cripple. And a girl. Decency they said…

Eksa winced as cold touched her ankle. The iron bangle clinked shut and Juuls turned a key to lock it. Eksa estimated the chain's length. At least two dozen meters. She looked over the rusted spots on the many links, wondering how difficult it would be to hack through it. Wondering if she even had the strength to break it with her sword and then run.

Unlikely.

“Go wash in the river and rid yourselves of the stench you lot carry,” Juuls said, pushing Eksa along.

The two others obeyed while Eksa flashed a glare. Juuls raised a hand to backhand her but Rillin caught it.

“We're not to harm her face, remember?” he said. “It'll be easier to sell her to some well off woman in need of labor if she looks half decent.”

Juuls sniffed. “In those rags and with those round cheeks? Not even her flame colored hair could makes her look half decent. Tch. She's foul enough to sour fresh milk.”

Eksa grit her teeth, flushing. She was not ugly. Father had always called her beautiful. And he was not a liar. “Better half decent than not at all,” she retorted. “I'm not the hag that steals from little girls and cages them!”

Juuls slapped her with her free hand. Rillin sighed and shook his head. “Go and wash, girl. No one's going to buy you if you smell like that.”

Eksa flushed harder, eyes watering. She stomped off towards the riverbank, chain rattling behind her. Mud gathered between her toes and the lines of her soles. It wasn't her fault. They kept her in a cage with others for days. It had been over two cycles since her last wash. Everyone's mingling odor had dulled her nose. She could hardly tell she smelled bad. Eksa paused before the riverbank, toes touching water. Goosebumps formed along her arms at the chill. She brought up her buttoned shirt —which was once white but now more greyish brown— to her nose and inhaled, coughing at the heinous smell trapped within. Her face grew hot. Had she ever smelled that bad?

“Hurry up!” the old hag called from behind.

Eksa wanted to turn and glare, but she didn't dare show her wet eyes to her captors. The other two slaves had already stripped themselves bare and were scrubbing their bodies with their nails. She turned away. Juuls couldn't be expecting her to strip before two grown men. And what good was it to wash if they put on the same dirty clothes?

She walked a further distance down the bank, tears finally fleeing as her chain reached its limit. She tugged on it with her leg. Unsmoothed edges of the manacle pressed hard against her shin. The other slaves were barely a dozen meters away from her. She didn't know what to do. She stood with feet submerged in cold water, staring at her own reflection. There really was nothing pretty about it. Her hair was a ragged mess. The red within it was hardly visible with grey clouds covering the sky. There was dirt smudged against her too round cheeks. And her nose seemed too small for her face.

But her father wouldn't lie to her. He just wouldn't.

She watched as drops fell out of her eye and into the river, ripples distorting her reflection before being broken by the flowing current. Mikael had lied. He promised to come back. But he never did.

Eksa stared across the bank. Lines of red hindered her vision as a gust of wind blew strands of her hair into her line of sight. It was a strong gust followed by a steady breeze moving at approximately ten miles per hour. The bank was wide enough for a decent sized ship to move through. A modest barque perhaps, with a crew of fifteen to twenty. With all sails unfurled, it would move at maybe six knots?

Eksa pictured the scene before her, eyes following the current. They flickered to the sky. A storm was imminent. It wouldn't pose much of a threat to a ship in a river. But wind speeds would pick up soon. The river current would move faster as well. When the rain hit, travel speed would double or maybe more. Eksa saw it all. Deckhands tugging ropes. Orders being shouted. Captain Mikael standing before the helm of a ship, brown coat billowing in the wind with short red hair mostly hidden beneath a tricorne. Second Captain Eksa standing right beside him, looking through a monocle at the—

At the naked bodies of old men bathing in a river.

A distant dream, shattered. Reality stabbed Eksa's chest harder than she'd anticipated. She went down on her knees and started washing her face. She glanced behind her. The two others were finally leaving the water. The current thankfully carried sullied water away from Eksa. She stumbled as someone tugged at the chain on her ankle.

“Hurry up!” Juuls screamed.

Eksa swallowed. She unbuttoned her shirt while constantly glancing behind herself in caution. She did her best to run wet hands along every part of her torso, shivering at her own cold touch. She paused. Her chest was slightly rounder than she last remembered. Her eyes watered again. No. Not yet…

She was becoming a woman. Estraean noblewomen didn't debut in society until the age of sixteen. Some would debut with a marriage already arranged by their parents —something that was supposed to be Eksa's fate. But her current captors weren’t Estraean. They had pale skin but their darker hair color marked them as either Xenarian, or northern Tarmian. How long before Juuls and Rillin stopped seeing her as just a girl? How long before selling her to a brothel became an option?

She, Eksa von Raudsol, proud daughter of the noble Raudsols, working the sheets? She violently shook her head. She would rather labor her entire life than be reduced to a toy in a bedroom to be used by man after man. A toy to be beaten and broken and sneered at just like her porcelain dolls.

Eksa washed herself furiously. She dipped her whole head into the water, trying to wash her hair. There had to be a way out. Some escape. If only she could be sold to someone willing to take her in as an adopted daughter. No. That standard was too high. She wasn't pretty. Juuls said so. Then she had to at least look decent enough to be sold to someone needing an extra hand. But that option was unlikely to succeed. No one had bought her yet. No one needed a girl with slender arms for labour. They needed someone larger and with muscle. Then what option did she have?

Eksa bit her lip, wet hands running through her hair. The embers within them were rekindled with every stroke. She had an option. She was Estraean. And Estraeans were expert craftsmen. She was no different. Eksa pulled herself out of the water and squatted before the muddy riverbank. What river is this? She gazed at her surrounds, seeing the pointed peaks of the Kal'Kar mountain ranges looming above the northern horizon. Then is this the Cinder River ? Had they really come that far?

It didn’t matter. She was adept at predicting the tide and the weather. But that skill was no use to her now. She wasn't on a ship. Even if she was, no one would take a girl into their crew. Her own father had declined her insistent pleas, stating that she was too young to join an expedition. Eksa had one other skill that she prided herself in. Map making. Juuls and Rillin wouldn't believe her if she told them. And they wouldn't bother buying pen and paper for her either. They needed to be shown her skills. That way, she might end up being sold off to a cartographer at the least.

Eksa picked up a stick and began drawing into the mud. Wind howled, further chilling moisture across her skin. She ignored it. Her hands kept moving. Kept drawing lines and curves and points. One glimpse around her was all Eksa needed to imagine a birds eye view of her surroundings. Her slavers screamed. She ignored it. They tugged on her ankle chain. She ignored it. A beauty was taking shape before her. Had already taken shape in fact. She began fine tuning the image, labelling the river, indicating distance, numbering the river's estimated depth.

Her map was nearly complete when she heard the angry stomping of a woman approaching her. She looked up, smiling at Juuls, expecting a gasp followed by praise. Instead, the woman stomped over Eksa's efforts, ruining the map in a single breath, and pulled her up by the hair. Eksa cried out.

“You little whelp. I told you to hurry and instead of washing, you're sitting here idling. Disobeying. And then even smile at me?” She dragged Eksa along and pushed her up the bank, further stomping over the drawing, ruining what little remained of it.

Eksa opened her mouth to protest but shut it as a lump formed in the base of her throat. Nothing but incoherent words would come out if she tried arguing while frustrated.

Of course drawing a map was never going to work. She was a slave girl who'd shown rebellious behaviour before. Who was expected to show it again. That’s all Juuls could see. A disobedient girl squatting down and drawing in the dirt. Just as a child would be expected to do.

Eksa shuffled forward, trying to use the grass before her to scrape away the mud that had gathered between her toes again. “Hurry up,” Juuls hissed, yanking Eksa back by her hair and then shoving her forward.

She cried out, tripping over the chains around one ankle. Juuls grunted, pulling her up by the hair again. The stone in Eksa's chest only grew heavier. What flames she'd managed to rekindle was being smothered to death by her captor's dirty hands.

It began to rain. Juuls cried out and ran back to the wagons. Eksa shuffled along, her hair absorbing the moisture very quickly and pressing down against her skin. At least she was being washed. She walked up to the barred wagon and stepped inside willingly, rain drops dripping down her fingertips. She glanced at the river one last time. At its many ripples and strong flowing current with increased wind speeds.

At the ship that didn't exist.

Eksa closed her eyes, leaning back against the bars. A distant dream. Unattainable. She hugged her knees. The chain around her ankle was undone and the wagon door was locked shut.

The wagon began to move.

Rain water dripped from her red hair and touched her round cheeks before rolling down their sides. The flames went out.