Chapter Sixty-Three: The Shadow of Clay
1247 Words
Marcela June
The countess’s hair billowed with the wind, and rather than emphasise its darkness, a deep green peered through as she rode past the slave wagon on a black steed.
A colour that, much like her beauty, caught her notice.
“Marcela! Get your head out of the window. We aren’t in disguise yet!”
‘Right! The plan.’
Marcela closed the curtain to their wagon then turned her attention to the people before her.
She, for whatever reason, never imagined a female noble riding a horse, yet the Countess and her servants rode gallantly against the winds.
But what did that matter in the face of their impending doom?
Their fears had finally come to pass. They were now owned and much worse by a noble. On the plus side, their inks would vanish, and they could escape and live freely, but on the negative, anything goes. There is a chance that most of them will not make it past their sentences.
There was no one to protect them from the inevitable; even their trouble maker and guardian, Tara, did not have such power.
Marcela buried her head on her knees when a sudden sense of homesickness flooded her.
Memories of her stay in Patum claimed her. It was odd, but her only sense of relief was a prison.
She could hardly remember why she was there in the first place, something about being a witch?
Was she?
She didn’t know.
Her mother was killed for the crime while she was arrested on ‘suspicion’ for the same.
Still, if only she hadn’t fought with the warden. If only she could have bore the thirteen unfair strikes without collapsing, perhaps she would have been able to serve her time without having to resort to…
A deep sigh escaped her, and her body, carrying endless exhaustion, drifted to lifeless slumber.
If only she did not have to open her eyes anymore.
If only she could just…sleep for eternity.
*
*
*
“The healthy-looking ones among us were asked to pose as fresh Clay knights, fresh from training. On the other hand, we are supposed to wait for an interview that will determine what tasks we take up in the castle.”
Chester finished, then shot them his idealistically sad smile.
“Isn't it weird that only Tara’s group was chosen to be knights?”
“Why are they the only ones chosen? We don’t look that bad?”
Chester tried his best to suppress the rising questions but to no avail.
Rather than focusing on his poor coordination skills, Marcela turned her gaze to their new home.
It was larger than anything she had ever seen in her life, if only run down, perhaps because of its apparent abandonment.
A sickly older man with a slight limp and wooden cane insisted on showing the Countess around, so Chester had to wait for the tour to end so that he could seek clarifications. In the meantime, as usual, he would just stall with nonsensical answers that were, if you think deeply about it, not answers.
There were times she was convinced that he only became their leader to oppose Tara’s ideas, not offer his own.
But who was she to voice such thoughts?
‘Will we eat like in the boat? The fish was good.’
“This place is… I mean, did you see the town? All the houses look like crap.”
Julietta, a chubby woman holding an infant, said then coughed into her hands.
She, like most, gave birth in the cells, and though her sentence was complete, her child’s was not. She was granted a generational punishment for stealing from a southern Baron.
Initially, Julietta was sentenced to seventy years in prison. Still, on pleading leniency, she was given five years on the condition that her generation would serve the remainder, meaning at least five years each until its end.
“How are you feeling? Was the travel okay for you?”
She gazed at the woman who seemed two minutes away from borrowing funds for a scheme she had no interest in, then turned her gaze back to the confused Chester.
It was better than holding an endless conversation with a woman too charismatic for her own good.
Camaraderie among slaves does not exist. No matter how much they were forced to live in spaces too squeezed to breathe.
“Gods, enough with the mute thing, you don’t have to illicit pity from anyone anymore. We have already made it to the highest place an enslaved person can dream. Only this ain’t the palace. But it’s a start, you know, food in our bellies? Johnnie here doesn’t have to go back to prison or the market. We can just stay here, you know?”
The older woman chirped, but she rolled her eyes when no response came her way.
“Look at that.”
Julietta pointed to the knights in the field, lazing around.
“I think that one’s interested in you. I mean, lucky you, He seems like their Alpha.”
Marcela’s gaze turned to the centre of the field, where a brown-haired, freckled large man picked his nose then rubbed the contents on the crate he sat on.
He blew her a kiss, and for a moment, Marcela wasn’t sure if the cold had caused a shudder to rise in her spine or if it was disgust.
“You’re all set in terms of protection, mute girl.”
*
Arusei Evergreen
“The tour of your castle is complete.”
“It’s small, shoddy, and run down. What do you mean complete when there wasn’t much to see initially? Don’t brag about your job when it is practically none existed from the beginning.”
The foulness I felt did not lessen with each bitter reply I offered.
I woke up nauseous, and though that ended hours ago, a sense of irritability replaced it.
‘When did I last get my period?’
A light sense of dread filled me.
‘Has a month passed since…? No, we used a contraceptive, the strongest advertised one. It has to be stress.’
‘Yes…stress.’
‘Who the hell am I convincing?’
“Countess, you have to understand that our land is not the way it used to be.”
“No s**t, it's not. But that doesn’t seem like it should be my fault, yet I am the one to bear and repair it. The port is completely tarnished, the town looks blown away to high hell, I can’t even tax the people because of how poor they are, I mean what, but sink this whole island, can I do?”
“Give me suggestions, Benjie?”
“My name is Holden.”
“It’s Benjie now, don’t forget it.”
“I-I understand, your ladyship.”
“Good.”
We descended the stone steps leading to the front compound, where nothing but dried trees and branches stood proudly.
“How much land is mine, territory wise?”
“The entire hill is yours; however, the lowlands, though they belong to you as well, harbour the majority of our population. That is, at least, how the former lord wanted it.”
Right, they killed the previous noble sent here thirty years ago by the reigning emperor in the Royals’ quest to ‘own’ all neutral territories.
Back then, Clay was among the top thriving territories in Norvig, now only a mere shadow of itself.
- Writer
