THREE - Esmarine

Esmarine deals with Atherton's snub.

As Esmarine made her way back to the break in the wall, she heard the loud and echoing sound of the castle drum.  It beat exactly one time, and then there was silence.  She waited to hear if it beat again, but there was nothing.  One beat was the sign that curfew was over.  Anyone from the Outskirts would now be able to enter the city so long as they got permission from the guard at the front gate.  It was also typically the sound that meant people inside Xantom were going to start waking up and going about their days.

Still, Esmarine decided it was best to sneak into the city through the break rather than head from the front gate.  It was unlikely that the guard would even recognize her as Silvan’s daughter, but if he did, she didn’t want to raise any questions as to what she was doing outside of the city during curfew in the first place.  Best not to let anyone know that there was a second entrance into the city and get Atherton caught the next time he tried to sneak in and steal food.

She made her way through the break, focused on getting home before her father discovered that she was missing again.  Not that he’d even notice I was gone.  Ever since being promoted to the elite status of King’s Guard, he wasn’t around much.  He spent almost the entirety of his day in the castle, guarding King Xanthus VIII and tending to whatever he needed.  Esmarine didn’t even know everything the job description consisted of, but she knew it was long, boring work.

She preferred the Outskirts.  The people there were interesting.  Most of the people inside the city were angry and bitter.  She couldn’t say hello to someone without receiving a look of scorn of an angry grunt in response.  It’s weird.  You’d think the people who have nothing would be the ones who are bitter, but the people in the Outskirts are much nicer to me.

The people in the Outskirts though seemed mostly contented, or at the very least accepting of the way things were.  They didn’t have everything they needed.  Most of them didn’t live very long.  People were dying all the time, but they didn’t complain.  This was the way things worked, and they lived with it all the time.

This fact made Esmarine feel even worse for them.  She wanted to help them if she could.  They deserved better than the scraps of the city, the things that the Xantomians didn’t want or think was worthy of them.  It was especially upsetting because the Xantomians didn’t have that much more than the people in the Outskirts, but they at least had a choice as to what they wanted.  It was still just leftovers and scraps from what the people inside the castle took for themselves, but it was more than the Outskirts got.

Esmarine felt particularly bad when it came to the babies.  There were a lot of babies in the Outskirts, and many of them didn’t last very long.  Saxon and Sephora had made it longer than most, thanks mostly to Atherton, and Esmarine wanted to make sure they grew up happy and healthy.  Atherton is so stupid though.  If he would just let me bring him a few extra supplies, they’d all be better off.  But he’s going to keep risking his life, and theirs, so he can do it all himself.  More than anything else, she wanted to help Saxon and Sephora.

She never told him, but she had been slipping extra supplies into Atherton’s bag for weeks.  He never noticed, he was always too distracted by trying to get out of the city unseen.  Maybe it was that, or maybe it was just a “boy” thing.  Her dad never noticed anything, either.  She had been taking blankets and wood from their home to the Outskirts and he hadn’t said a word about it.

When you have as much as we do, it’s hard to notice one little thing go missing.  I guess Atherton has a point there.

Esmarine walked past the front of the castle and down the main street of the city towards her house.  Most likely her father was already inside the castle.  The King’s Guard started work long before curfew ended, long before anyone in the city awoke.  Most of what they had to do involved getting the castle ready for the King and patrolling the hallways inside the castle to look out for intruders.  It sounds like the most boring job in the whole world.

It wasn’t far from the castle to her house.  Most members of the King’s Guard lived inside the castle, but seeing as her father had only recently been promoted, there weren’t accommodations for him yet.  They resided in the house they had lived in when Silvan held the title of City Guard.  It was close to the castle, as all Guards’ homes were, and very spacious.

The Guards needed to live close to the castle in case there was ever an emergency.  In that case, three drumbeats would sound from the drum on top of the castle, and the Guards would know to get to the castle immediately.  That hadn’t happened once in all of Esmarine’s lifetime.

One beat was the sign that curfew was beginning or ending.  Two beats meant that the King had an announcement to make to everyone.  Three beats was the call to arms for anyone in the Guard.  And four drumbeats meant there was going to be an Exiling Ceremony.  Four beats is what everyone hoped would happen when the first drumbeat rang out.  An Exiling Ceremony meant that once again, the people inside the city got to feel superior to someone else.  They were the righteous ones who could punish the wrongdoers and send them to the fate in the Barelands.

Even the people of the Outskirts took part in the Exiling Ceremonies.  Once someone made it through the front gate of the city, they were generally lined up all the way to the fence that surrounded the Outskirts and separated them (barely) from the Barelands.

Lately, the number of Exiling Ceremonies had increased.  Personally, Esmarine hated them.  It just gives everyone a chance to abuse each other.  People are already mean enough, they don’t need an extra excuse to treat others like waste.  What accounted for all the extra Exilings, Esmarine didn’t know.  She tried asking her father one time a few weeks earlier, but he had simply rambled on and on about how the Exiling Ceremony was important to build character in the citizens of Xantom and to make sure that people were following the rules.

It didn’t seem like it was working.  All it really did was make people try harder not to get caught breaking any rules.  If anyone knew that she was sneaking supplies to Atherton in the Outskirts, she would surely be exiled.  Unless her father had some sort of power over the decision making process, but that decision ultimately fell to the King.  She didn’t know a lot about Xanthus VIII, but she knew he would exile her in a heartbeat if she did something wrong, it didn’t matter whose daughter she was.  Hence the extra precaution of re-entering the city through the break instead of the main gate.

She made it back to her home and entered slowly, just in case her father hadn’t made it up to the castle yet.  She pushed the door open carefully, not making any noise.  It was pitch-dark inside, not a single lantern was lit, the fireplace was completely cold.  Either he’s at the castle or he hasn’t woken up yet.  Either way, I think I’m safe.

She picked up a torch lying on the ground next to the front door and lit it using the torch outside her home.  She made her way inside and sat down on one of the chairs, pondering what might be available in the house that she could bring to Atherton without her father noticing.

I guess I could take him a little more wood.  We do seem to have a decent amount of that, but it’s looking a lot lower than usual.  I thought we’d usually stocked up on that by now?  She walked over to the barrel where they kept their personal supply of oil for the torches.  That, too, was lower than it had been in weeks.  Is daddy forgetting to bring home more supplies?  I’ll have to remind him.  But I can’t call attention to it, or he’ll notice when I take it…

She just had to wait.  Surely it wouldn’t be long before the supplies were replenished, as they always were, and she would be able to keep helping Atherton.

That was when she heard a drumbeat echo out across the city.  There were definitely going to be more beats, curfew had just been called.  The question was how many more times she would hear the sound.  The second drumbeat echoed out and Esmarine closed her eyes and prayed that it would just stop there.  Not another Exile… not another Exile…

The third beat rang out.  No.  And sure enough, there was the fourth.  She heard a cheer from outside her home.  The Xantomians were already celebrating the fact that another person was going to be walked out of the city limits to their death.

Sometimes I absolutely hate this place.

Reviews

[DoormanDan]

I am really getting into this book now! This world you have created seems to be one full of greed, corruption, hunger and depression, and those factors are making want to know how this struggle will eventually conclude. I eagerly look forward to the next chapter!

[Justin Xavier Smith]

Thanks!! I'm glad you're enjoying so much. It was a blast to write. And I feel like every chapter is better than the one before it