Chapter 2

Chapter 2

“What was that you said about a move being made, Viscui?"

"I said that if a move was made against us, I would contact my charge. And I did."

"The only problem I see is the move made."

"That's an understatement, Cunsu. This isn't just a problem, it's a catastrophe!"

"But what are we supposed to do about it? My charge certainly isn't ready. Is yours?"

"No, but we may not have a choice. They seem to be converging."

"Already!? But the stress might kill their minds!"

"There's nothing we can do to prevent it if He's already started. We have to prepare the best we can."

*************************************************

Cheenr flinched as the whip cracked against his bare back. Gritting his teeth, he shoved forward on the oar, feeling the coarse wood beneath his callused hands. Simultaneously, thirty-one other slaves pushed on the oars, and the Bastion ship moved forward.

"Come on!" the taskmaster yelled, cracking his whip, "Move, you dirt-men! We've got to get to Vasilon by tomorrow!" None of the slaves answered his call; it would have been taken as "answering back" and earned ten lashes. Most of them felt that the brief satisfaction of verbal rebellion wasn't worth the pain.

Cheenr felt differently. "So you can do what, master? Find a new woman to dote on?" It was common knowledge that all women he had tried to court rejected him. It was why the taskmaster took this job; he enjoyed taking out his anger on helpless slaves.

Sixty-two slave eyes turned on him, their expressions ranging from amusement to horror.  The taskmaster was taken aback, but his face quickly morphed into a thin-lipped smile. "What was that, Twenty-five?" he said, dangerously quiet.

Cheenr cleared his throat. Too late to back out now. "Well..." He said, forming his quip, " everyone knows about your... experience, I'll put it, with the opposite gender. Is this whole trip just to get you to your first date with your new girlfriend?"

The taskmaster waved away some guard who had moved forward to shut Cheenr up. He walked down from the upper deck where he oversaw the rowing, gripping his whip tightly. he stormed right up to Cheenr and said loudly, "Shut. Up. And start. Rowing." Cheenr looked down and began rowing again, waiting for the taskmaster to begin lashing. But the taskmaster didn't; he leaned down close to Cheenr's sweating face and whispered, "I'm not going to whip you, Twenty-five. You're the strongest of these slaves, and I can't have you becoming weaker. But you say I'm looking for a woman in Vasilon. Now, you know that's not true; we're taking you and these other slaves to Ahtli's Teeth. So, since I can't get my supposed woman in Vasilon, what's to stop me from taking a woman from this ship? Who's going to keep me from taking Valya, for instance?"

Cheenr paled. He looked over at the small awning set up on board, where the captain and his officers were lounging, being served by the female prisoners. Valya, Cheenr's sister, was among them.

Alright, she wasn't his real sister. Cheenr was an only child, but he had a large protective streak. So when one of the serving girls had caught the attention of the captain and been sent back to the slave deck sobbing with her plain dress torn, he had been the only one who comforted her. All of the others treated her as a pariah; no one wanted to comfort one of the captain’s playthings. They said that it was her fault; she was too beautiful. That particular comment had nearly caused a fistfight. Cheenr had never been so angry before. The captain normally dropped the “used girls” at the next town they docked at, but Cheenr had pleaded with him, claiming that Valya was his sister. The captain had seemed skeptical, but the taskmaster, for some reason, had backed up Cheenr’s story.

The reason for that had now become abundantly clear.

“That’s right,” the taskmaster sneered, “Learn your place, Cheenr, and she will remain safe. We wouldn’t want her to be more scarred than she already is, would we?” He walked off, snickering.

Cheenr stood, dumbfounded, before being shoved hard by the slave next to him. He started rowing again, grunting as he pushed the heavy oar with the other slave. he looked at Valya. She was so small for her age... Eighteen and she still looked small and innocent. Cheer wanted to keep her safe, but it was becoming increasingly difficult when the captain had her in his personal staff. He had already taken her once, what was to stop him from doing it again? It made Cheenr so mad that he almost wanted to...

But no, he couldn't. Not again.

I still don’t see why you’re so paranoid of it.

"That's because you're a voice in my head," Cheenr whispered. "You aren't supposed to understand what my sane mind feels.

How many times do I have to tell you that you’re not insane?

"That's exactly what a voice in my head would say. You're trying to get me to listen to you, and once I do, you'll convince me to do all kinds of things."

You listened to me once.

"And it landed me on a Bastion prison ship! How is that supposed to make me trust you?"

The voice didn't say anything, which satisfied Cheenr. He had stumped it. Maybe it would leave him alone now.

********************************************

Valya watched the taskmaster whisper to Cheenr from the corner of her eye. That man (she had heard that he bedded a new woman every week) made her nervous. Then again, men in general made her nervous. Even Cheenr did, to a degree, but he understood her feelings. She had seen the worst, most carnal side of a man's mind, and she still hadn't recovered. Maybe in time, she would, but after two weeks, the event was still fresh in her mind.  Being dragged into the middle of the night to the captain’s quarters, him seated at his bed… She shuddered in horror. Anyone would fear the opposite gender after such an experience.

“You, air girl! I feel hot; crank the device,” the captain said to her, irritably.

She jumped and realized that she had been standing without doing anything. Valya fumbled an apology and went over to the box-like contraption. Gripping the bumpy metal handle maladroitly, nearly jamming her finger against the side, she began turning the crank. Air began blowing from the open end of it, where the spinning axle protrusions were. She had no idea how it worked; somehow, using multiple gears, turning the crank made cool air come out the other end.

The captain sighed as the air blew over his sweaty face. Valya sighed in her mind. In Korsa, the captains were all women, and they participated in working the ship to show they were no better than the swabbies. But here, it was different. Men thought that women were simply servants and child-makers, and took all the important tasks for themselves. For a proper Korsan girl like Valya, such thinking was ridiculous and even insulting. Men more “superior” than women? Preposterous. Of course, she didn’t say such things; the captain had made it very clear that he could do whatever he wanted to her.

No, don’t think about that, she told herself. Bury the thoughts so they don’t consume you. Valya drew herself up and assumed her normal look of docile subservience. She stood off to the side, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t pay attention to her. He didn’t seem to need her to continue cranking the box; it would last for another five minutes or so. Valya turned back to watching Cheenr row.

It was incredible how strong he was. He didn’t look like it, but he could have turned the row all on his own. He was fairly tall, not like the  seven-foot giants of the Korsan neighbor country Contavla, but he wasn’t short either. His strength was evident in his muscle. Cheenr had told her a few stories of Quasibal, his island home to the south, and how living there required lots of exercise; there was hardly any metal on the island, so they made everything out of wood. Cheenr had been a lumberman, carrying pieces of tree trunk from the forests to the building sites. There, he had sawed them up himself with a saw meant for two people. All that work made him seem more like a living boulder than a man; he wasn’t the most muscular person she had seen (again, living next to Contavla really raised your expectations of pure magnitude), but he was no weakling.

In exchange for his stories of Quasibal, Valya had tentatively related her life in Korsa, a small peninsula on the northern border of Klafon. The cold winters caused the main insect population to evolve thick, soft cocoons to hibernate in the winter time. The Korsan women had figured out how to harvest these cocoons to create cloth, which they called silk. It was an incredibly valuable cloth.

Silk wasn’t their only export, however. When the first settlers travelled to Korsa, they found many ruins of civilization before the continents first sank into the sea. Among these ruins were several glass domes that were able to retain heat. The settlers, understanding that the cotton seeds would freeze in the cold climate, planted them inside the green-glass domes where it could stay warm with only a few fires burning every twenty yards or so. The sheep they had brought grazed on the tough winter grass, and their wool grew thick and fast. Soon, Korsa was harvesting all these and became the largest cloth-exporting country. It was so abundant that their currency became cloth squares of various hews and fabrics that determined their value. Silk, of course, was the most valuable, and the rarity of purple dyes made it the most valuable color. One purple-silk was enough to buy a small house.

Then, of course, there was the gender-role difference. Since women knew the secret to turning the cocoons into silk, they controlled the most valuable resource on Korsa. Such an advantage gave them enormous power over the men, and soon the established role of men had been reversed; suddenly they were the ones to stay at home and take care of the children.

Since Quasibal was not nearly as radical as Korsa, Cheenr had been surprised at the Korsan system. Valya had expected as much; Korsan women never expected foreign men to understand them, and they didn’t care what was thought of them. Korsa had found one other distinct advantage against foreign countries trying to annex Korsa to rid Ilthalia of the “unnatural” role of women: they were afraid to fight a woman. The Korsan men accepted the women’s authority and taught many to fight, and so when people from Contavla and Zylon invaded Korsa’s southern border, they found an army of women waiting for them. Chivalry, unfortunately for the Contavlans, worked against them, and they spent too much time begging for a peaceful surrender, which allowed the Korsans to form an attack plan. They had almost no casualties when they attacked the foreigners in the dead of night.

Valya had heard this story hundreds of times, but she didn't enjoy it. Fighting of any kind tended to make her turn around and run as far away as she could.

Unfortunately, she couldn't get away from it here. Many of the Bastion officers had tried to follow their captain's example, and Cheenr took it upon himself to stop them. If any of the other slaves had deliberately fought officers, they would have been executed in an instant, but not Cheenr. He was the strongest slave they had, and when he wasn't fighting, he was going out of his way to be the perfect slave. And all that so he could keep Valya from them. She had no idea what she would do without him.

A shout came down from the crow's nest up above. "Land ho!" shouted the scout atop the mast. Valya turned to stare across the water to the west; it took a bit for her to make it out, but she was soon able to see the hazy Vasilon coastline. The captain sat up and craned his neck forward, trying to see. He frowned. "Still a day away, at least," he mumbled, "But it's something." He stood up out of his chair and stretched. "Well," he said to the group, "You can be done for now, ladies, I need to go do something productive now." He went off to his quarters, latching the door closed behind him, and the women shot amused glances at each other; now they could talk among themselves. They gathered into a tighter group so that the taskmaster wouldn't hear them and began to talk excitedly.

"Well, my dears, what's been happening lately?" one asked.

"Slave Fourteen snuck into the women's section last night just to see me!" another responded, "He called me the most beautiful woman he had ever met, and then he took me to a closet and-"

Valya stopped listening around that point; the women's gossip was never about anything important, if there was anything important to slaves. She didn't begrudge them their conversation, however, because slave women needed something to occupy their time. She just didn't need to take part in it.

It would do you good to be interested in something again.

"As if you cared," she said fiercely underer breath, "Where was your advice when the captain took me? The more I think about it, the more I think you're just a delusion caused from stress."

Maybe stress is what’s keeping you from accepting my presence.

"Yeah, right. 'Oh no, I'm too stressed to listen to a disembodied voice inside my head.' Leave me alone, you're not real."

Would you be talking to me if you really believed that?

She flinched. Why was this thing so good at figuring her out? How could it deliver such a ringing argument so quickly?

"Valya? Are you all right?" One of the younger women had noticed her standing stock-still, whispering to herself.

"Yes, I'm fine," she said, "Just... thinking."

The girl nodded and moved away. One of the older women took her and began whispering in her ear. Most likely telling the girl about Valya's experiences. Valya had a sort of reputation; she was the only one who had stayed on the ship after she caught the captain's eye. That made her much more "experienced" than the other women, and they generally left her alone. Fine with her.

Valya looked at the sky and noticed that the sun was beginning to set. "Come," she told the other women, "We need to go prepare the officers' meal."

********************************************

Cheenr awoke to screaming in the night. His first thought was Valya!.

But it didn’t sound like her voice; it was more high-pitched. Cheenr sighed in sadness. It was one of the other serving girls that Valya worked with, being taken away by either the captain or one of the other officers. The other slaves were looking around, and became disinterested when they reached to the same conclusion. Cheenr would have joined them if the voice in his head said, Wait!

He stayed sitting up, waiting for whatever it was the voice thought he should hear. He didn’t hear anything other than the girl’s screaming becoming increasingly distant-

Wait. He heard another voice, and he was shocked to hear that this one belonged to Valya. “How dare you!” she shouted, and Cheenr could hear her out in the hall, storming after the men, “Leave her alone!”

Cheenr sighed again. She says almost nothing for two weeks and now she’s doing this? He lay back down again, wishing that she hadn’t developed a rebellious streak at such a futile moment.

Then he heard the men answering her, and one of them was the taskmaster. “Well, look at this, boys!” he shouted, and Cheenr could tell that he was talking about Valya, “Looks like we got another one!” The men laughed and their footsteps indicated that they were slowly stalking toward her.

Cheenr froze. What would happen to her if she was taken, again? He wouldn’t let himself find out. Cheenr jumped out of his wooden bunk and sprinted for the door to the central hallway.

The men outside froze as he swung the door open and stepped out. Their hands were outstretched and only a few feet from reaching Valya, who was cowering against the wall. The taskmaster, holding the other girl securely at the foot of the staircase leading to the deck, smiled. “Well, what’s this, Twenty-five? Are you finally going to give me a reason to make you a prisoner instead of a slave?”

Cheenr stared back at him, unblinking. He made a step forward, said, “Yes,” and punched the first man in the jaw. The man very-nearly punched his companion as he flailed about, unaccustomed to having slaves fight back. He got up, fists up and ready for a brawl, but the taskmaster snapped, “No, Thirell, Torha, I will handle this.” The two men shrank backwards, taking the girl from the taskmaster as he walked forward, pulling out his whip as he did so. “So, you fancy yourself a fighter, Twenty-five, is that right?” He snapped the whip, the lash pulling back only inches from Cheenr’s face. He glared at the taskmaster. “My name,” he said, more confident than he had ever felt since leaving Quasibal, “Is Cheenr.”

The taskmaster growled and slashed his whip again. This time, it wasn’t for theatrics; he was truly trying to teach Cheenr a “lesson”. Cheenr dodged away easily; he had never revealed how much combat training he had received on Quasibal. It had been a while, but training like that never really left you. He sidestepped and ducked, dodging the diagonal lash of the whip. Cheenr couldn’t see well with only one small lantern for illumination, however, and the end of the whip snapped against his upper arm. He gave a sharp yelp of pain and scurried back a bit, but did not give up.

The taskmaster laughed. “Can’t handle pain, can you, Twenty-five? Well, that’s too bad. Soon I can get you out of the way and take my prize!” He smiled evilly at Valya.

Get ready to protect her, the voice in Cheenr’s head told him.

Valya, instead of cowering, drew herself up. “No,” she said coldly, “You won’t.” She closed her eyes and slapped a hand against the wooden walls of the hallway.

Her hand flashed with a pale yellow energy, and then light flooded the hall. Cheenr was sure that she had set the ship on fire.

But the wood didn’t burn. Cheenr looked closer, awestruck, and found that it was an entirely different substance. It glowed with light, but no heat came from it. The entire hallway was now illuminated equally.

The taskmaster stood there, whip at his side, stunned. "She...what...?" He stuttered, "How is this possible?"

Then he smiled again, staring at Valya with glee. "Looks like we have a new prisoner for Ahtli's Teeth."

Valya paled in fear, and Cheenr shared it. Ahtli's Teeth was the maximum security prison in Rellibast; the taskmaster had told Cheenr they were going there, but they were just the slaves on the ship, not the prisoners being sent there. That prison had been named for the dark god of Ilthaism, the religion brought when the settlers were sent from Silavn to the continents, to signify that there was nothing more horrible. Ahtli's Teeth was a prison for...

Sorcerers, Cheenr thought. Valya somehow had used magic, and now the taskmaster wanted to make her a prisoner.

Come on, Valya, Cheenr thought, Do something else to stop him!

But it didn't look like she could. Her eyes were dazed and she seemed like she was about to collapse. she swayed on her feet, managed to say, "Cheenr...?" and then toppled to the ground.

The taskmaster laughed. "Well," he said, "that makes everything easier for me."

Cheenr recovered his wits and ran forward, blocking the taskmaster's path. "You'll still have to go through me," he growled.

The taskmaster's eyes narrowed; his hand clenched the handle of his whip. "So you're still fighting a pointless battle. Fine." He reached up to his bicep and tore away the sleeve of his shirt, revealing the opal strapped to his arm underneath. Cheenr flinched. The taskmaster was a Bastion sorcerer this whole time? Well, Cheenr couldn't back downnow; Valya was counting on him. He stood his ground, not letting his fear show. The taskmaster stood where he was as well, concentrating. He opened his hand, and a ball of fire coalesced in his palm. "Not very original, I admit; most sorcerers can summon fire, but it's quite enough to get you out of the way!" He shot the fire at Cheenr.

Cheenr hadn't been sure what to do; if he dodged, the fire would hit Valya, and if he stood there, the fire would hit him. As the taskmaster had been about to throw it, the voice in his head told him what to do.

Catch it.

What? Catch a ball of fire? Cheenr thought that was crazy, but he had no time to think of a better solution. He raised his hand in front of his face and closed his eyes, waiting for the familiar pain of fire to embrace him again.

It didn't. He looked again, and saw that the fire was now hanging in front of his hand, completely stationary. The taskmaster looked more shocked than he had when witnessing Valya's magic. "You too?" He said, flabbergasted, "How in Ahtli's embrace did you..."

Cheenr held his hand out in front of him, and the fire burned brighter, with a much darker red hue. "Magic," Cheenr said.

NOW IT'S MY TURN, the voice said, incredibly loud in Cheenr's mind. The fire exploded into seven different columns of flame, five of them colliding with the taskmaster's chest. He flew backwards and crashed against the stairs leading to the deck. The other two hit his assistants, both of which were immediately slammed against the wall, the girl being left completely alone. She looked at Cheenr with a mix of horror and awe. She held her hands up and screamed, "Don't hurt me!"

"Don't worry," Cheenr replied, "I won't." He turned to Valya and helped her up. "Come on Valya, we need to get off this ship. We won't be able to hide or explain this to the captain." She seemed to take a while to comprehend what he said, but she eventually nodded. She walked over to the girl and said, "Zylna, get back to your bunk. You were never involved in this." Zylna nodded, then threw her arms around Valya. "Stay safe," she whispered. She ran to the women's bunks and closed the door carefully.

Valya looked at Cheenr and said, "So what's the plan?"

"We need to take one of the rowboats on the sides of the ships," Cheenr replied, "The taskmaster told me that the ship was taking prisoners to Ahtli's Teeth; that will be their top priority. If we can steal a boat and quietly row in the opposite direction, they won't notice we're gone and we can row in the opposite direction. There are a few Korsan communities in Morstasia, right? We can hide there and find a way back to Korsa."

Valya nodded. "Well, I can't think of anything better, " she said, "Let's do it."

"Great. You find the boat and I'll see if I can sneak some supplies." They ran to the staircase, stepping over the body of the taskmaster. Valya looked down at his shocked, blank face and said, "He swore in Ahtli's name... Don't only Ahtliists do that?"

Cheenr stared at the man. He hadn't even thought about that... He had just killed an Ahtliist? One of those cultists who worshipped the goddess of darkness? He shuddered. They were the dark underside of Ilthaism. The less Cheenr or Valya had to do with them, the better.

"Don't think about that," He told Valya, grabbing her arm, "We have to go now."

"That," said a voice from on deck, "Will not be possible." The captain looked down at them from the top of the stairs, flanked by two more officers. His own opal shown brightly on his left arm.

The captain smiled at their shocked faces and said, "You didn't know that the officers' gems are all linked, did you? We can sense when another is using it." He laughed. "Too bad." He raised his arm, and a beam of dark purple light shot at Valya.

Cheenr tried to jump in front of it, but something was wrong. Out of nowhere, he was feeling slow. His body wasn't reacting fast enough, so he was too late; the beam of light hit Valya in the chest. She swooned and fell to the ground. Cheenr screamed.

"Oh, don't worry," the captain said, "That will just put her to sleep for a day or so. Plenty enough time to bind you two and put you with the rest of the prisoners. Funny, I've never seen magic like yours." One of the other sorcerers shot energy at Cheenr, and he blacked out.

Author's Note

When I wrote the original draft, I hadn't given Cheenr and Valya any backstory at all and their characterizations were dull. As I was going back through, I decided to make their characters, especially Valya, more realistic. This isn't Game of Thrones by any stretch of the imagination, but I did want to realistically portray what a woman would have to go through when being a prisoner in a male-dominated country. If you think it was too much, let me know. I'm not planning on focusing on the actual event that scarred on Valya that much, but her emotional scars do come into play a lot, so it was necessary to explain why exactly she is the way she is.