20 YEARS AGO

His eyes were greeted with the sight of filth. Rotten produce; slumping over in his hands with a terrible stink welcoming itself into his nostrils. He groaned. Sen threw the vegetable into a basket to his right; grimacing. Two baskets lay by his side, one with brown, rounded vegetables shaped not to dissimilar to eggs, the other with… liquidified produce. Misshaped and a poor stink the entire basket only gave him a wince.

He already wore a long cloth around his mouth, shielding him from the smell, but Sen closed his eyes each and every single time his hand yanked one out of the white soil, heaving a sigh of relief each and every single time the vegetable was round.

“Oi! Sen!”

Turning to the right, he saw a figure in the distance with another cloth around their mouth, holding a basket in hand.

“What is it, Hat!”

The voice hesitated. “How many rotten hiefers did ya get?”

“At least half of my entire harvest this season! You?”

“I lost it all, Set! It’s all gone! Everything’s this fuckin’ slouchy mess!” Hat neared, tossing his basket on the ground. “EVERYTHING!”

“Fuck, you gotta be kiddin’ me…” Set dropped the hiefer elsewhere, dashing to Hat’s side. The stink of the pile of malformed heifers on the ground could be smelled from miles away; the eerie yellowed pile stacked on the snowed-in field off-putting to all.

“Shit, Hat, you got nothin’ for this year?”

“Nothin’. Nothin’... ever since those imperial fucks came ridin’ down from whatever island they live up in I haven’t been able to sell no damn heifers.”

“Damn.”

The snow continued to fall against the men’s clothes, piling up at their feet amidst the white field. The edge of the terrace behind him rose slightly with the line of bricks denoting the end of that level; a dozen more below. Little holes in the snow followed footprints vanishing as snowflakes fell around them, Set patted Hat on the back.

“Come over sometime. I think the few Korun down over at the fork can help out as well.”

“Fuck, Set. Fuck… your kids tryin’ to go to the church as well?”

“Yeah, Hat. Doesn’t really change much, outside of Tarod, not a single one’s a guy. Just had three…”

“Hey, at least your boy isn’t trying his fuckin’ best to drive his old man into the ground. I swear, he should be staying here helping out with the farm and he just wants to go off and leave me in the damn snow here. You hear about the imperial fuckers showing up down at the mouth?”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Happened a week ago. Dragons and everythin’. They’re saying they’re running to I’sho.”

“Damn…” Set muttered, looking back at the heifers lying on the ground. “...whaddya want to do with those?”

“I don’t really care. Mind keepin’ em? You can have the fertilizer.” Hat groused, floating the produce up and dumping it on the side of the field already littered with lines of footsteps. “Sorry about tossing ‘em down here.”

“Yeah, yeah… it’s okay…” Set clarified, patting Hat on the back. “You stay safe.”

“Will do. You too.”

Just like that the two elven separated; Hat disappearing down one of the dozens of unwieldy uneven staircases separating parts of the terraces. Set bent down again, pulling out more, the stink again overwhelming his nose. Once in a while he’d pull his hood back over his ears, a small string tying it to his head.

The baskets of rotten produce only continued to increase and a good heifer was a dime a dozen as he went on. The snow stacked up, his gloved hands unprotected; the tips of his fingers shooting out of broken woolen gloves. They reddened every single time he smashed his hands into the snow and the dirt below, yanking out yet another slumping, poor-smelling vegetable.

Even as the sun set behind the mountains he simply lit up a lantern with magic and carried it along. Sweat, freezing on his skin, turned his skin into a coating of ice; his cheeks red and his fingers throbbing. He began to pull out hiefers with magic, the imaginary hands doing the work of pulling out more disappointing rotten results.

Finally he stopped.

Trotting up the stairs he came upon a multitude of baskets, half-covered in snow. Two groups, one distinctly smaller, the other smelly and unpleasant. He groaned, covering the baskets with cloth and tying them all onto a rope he carried all the way back. His back strained and stang; the magic only shouldered the burden on the baskets.

The lantern still floating along to his side, his weary eyes slowly saw a few dim lights in the distance. Trudging along, his feet lifted over increasingly thick and heavy snow, the lights came closer; at the door, he dropped the baskets outside and draped a large cloth over them. Set sighed and slid the door open.

“I’m back.”

What little warmth there was touched his skin, the grey rooms all lit by a single lantern each. A large fire burned in the large lantern hanging from the ceiling.

“...excuse me, father?” The soft, high-pitched voice asked.

The wind blowing against his face, the thick sweater and jacket he was covered with flailing about as he closed the door, the skin-drooping man turned to face the girl in front of him. His yellow hair stained with dirt and mud, her yellow hair clean if unkempt; he silently nodded.

“What is it.” He responded, scratching his neck.

“What’s this… what’s this text about?” He picked up the book from his daughter’s hands, dusting it off to find the crosshairs symbol of the local church. “Which page of it?”

“140.”

He flipped open the thick but worn book and found the page. “Which part? The Kai’s story?”

His daughter nodded.

“Well, Shirin… ‘his great god punishes those who defy his great truth that marriage is the only period during which a man and woman can be intimate’?”

“Um… the one after that, I think.”

“‘His great god let down the dragons upon the earth to punish the loose Yun, the loose girl who associated too widely for her position’?”

“Yeah, yes…” Shirin looked up. Set scratched his head, racking his brain for the answer.

“Ah… the girl liked both men and women.”

Set gave the black-cover book back to Shirin; trotting over the fur-covered floor towards the kitchen, the smell of the simple outdoors oven and the iron basin sitting on the floor smoky. The bare table in the centre of the room still had a single plate on it with two bare heifers on the plate; a bit of steam coming off it.

“Oy, Anya!” He shouted, sitting down at the table, looking around.

“What is it, Set!” The voice came in from the other room.

“Did - did Tarod break the utensils again?”

“You didn’t get utensils, Set! Remember? The scammer?”

“Oh, yeah…” He muttered, holding up the vegetable and giving it a long stare. His gaze blurred, seemingly staring off into nowhere, tapping his fingers on the table, his eyes slowly wandering from the heifer to the grey wall in front of him.

“You okay, Set?”

Anya stumbled into the room in worn, pale-brown clothes, the pants she wore baggy and ill-fitting. She had the same long ears everyone in the house did, her braided hair swinging around as she sat opposite Set.

“I’m fine…”

Anya looked over at Set’s shoulders. “Tell me to come and help you sometimes, at least with the baskets. The lord above would understand.”

He glanced towards his wife. “I’m fine. All the other men do it.” He hesitated.

“The heifers, Anya. Half are dead.”

“Dead?”

“I… they’re rotting. Slouching… they smell like manure. No one can possibly eat it.”

She stared at him with incredulous eyes. “Has anyone tried?”

“Narenda tried. He’s vomiting and belching like… they say he’s going to die. We might as well have been cursed.”

“Don’t say that. The lord doesn’t curse anyone needlessly.”

“Oh, damn sake’s Anya! The lord’s our god but right now I need you down here with ME! Prayers aren’t going to help us survive!”

“You take that back.”

A moment of silence ensued; both staring at each other.

“...sorry, Anya.”

“...sorry, Set.” She sighed, patting him on the back.

“How many do we have in the shed?”

She ran the numbers with her fingers. “Maybe enough for a month - two months, if it’s just one heifer a day.”

“So a month and a half at best… I’ve only gotten half the usual harvest so far. Is there anything we could do about it?”

Anya walked over to Set’s side of the table. “The church, Setra. The church. They can give food.” She insisted, grabbing Set’s shoulders.

“Right… right. The church. That works…” He stopped. “...any other, options?”

Anya rolled her eyes. “The church is incredibly generous. There’s no need to be so apprehensive about their power.”

Set paused. “...I was born a kaisriech, and am still one.” A mild smirk came on his face.

“You don’t even pray in the morning for an entire hour like the rest of them do - do you really believe?” She grinned.

He laughed. “You don’t pay a thousand coins to give some old man in royal clothes every few weeks, do you really believe?”

The two kissed. Both with slight wrinkles under their eyes, the ring on their ears a symbol of their marriage.

“I’ll go and get you some water.” Anya said, taking the side door of the kitchen outside.

Set looked longingly towards the open door.

“...wonder what’s gonna happen…”

Shirin bit her lip.

“Gah…” Wei muttered, staring at the gravel, coal and iron deposits lining the ground, his hands barely supporting him off the stone floor.

“Y’know, would not recommend that, the weirdo’s lookin’.” Shirin remarked, pointing at the tiny slit in the wall. Ever so slightly they could both see the eyes staring through. “And just between you and me, all of them seem to be in a terrible mood about their boss. Not very conducive to a normal conversation.”

Wei stared up at the slit himself from the floor, filled with little pebbles and shards everywhere. His hand stung with the feeling of tiny rocks piercing into his palm, but he didn’t react in any capacity whatsoever. Shirin, scratching her ear with a peeved expression on her face, peered down on the stained, scratchy and messy blueprint. In her native Kurai and his native English, markings plastered across dozens of diagrams, English terms constantly scratched out while the Kurai was entirely intact.

She pushed one of the sheets out of the way, picking up another, scrutinising the contents, before dropping it and looking for another. Eventually she reached a sheet with only English writing on it and started reading from a bulletpoint list in the corner; before crossing out one of the many entries, titled ‘blow up furnace.’

Looking over at the peep-hole slit, Shirin rolled her eyes.

“Do they ever do anything, honestly?”

Wei groused, “...probably we’re too important to have people coming in and beating us every few hours…”

“I ain’t complaining, but boy if that is a weak way to show us that they’re on top.”

“Would you really want them to though…”

Shirin replied, “Hell yeah. I can take them.” Grinning, she went back to looking up and down the list, briefly glancing at the blast furnace; the collapsed structure lying on the floor, smashed through the lathe and another table. The debris had been swept close to the fallen part of the furnace.

“There goes doing anything with that massive waste of time and resources…” She muttered, crossing out the blast furnace on the list, with uneven lettering and unclear words; letters blotting into one another and a liberal lack of capitalisation. Shortened and misspelled words were everywhere, with ‘you’ turned into ‘u’ and ‘furnace’ turned into ‘frnace’.

Running down the endless list, her finger passed ‘drill a tunnel out to de mountain face’, scratched out by ‘needs more people’, ‘human shield usage’ scratched out by ‘can u rly carry dem though?’ and ‘fight your way out’ crossed out by ‘are u really this much of a fckin idiot’.

Shirin rolled her eyes again. Sighing, an uneasy atmosphere hanging around her, she ran her finger down to a second list; ‘dangerous’.

Picking up the pen she drew a line over proposal after proposal written down, her hand shaking; her skin flaking and her eyes half-closed, struggling to stay open. Her lips parched, she licked them slowly as she continued to look down the entire list.

“Oi, are you even listening to me?” She heard him say.

“Maybe!”

An audible sigh was followed by “Wah lao… you go do that report thing the woman wants. Haven’t gotten sleep for like a day ah…”

Instinctively twirling her dirtied yellow hair, she saw Wei disappear out of the corner of her eye. Still she continued to go down the list, her frown growing progressively stronger and larger with each line drawn.

Tapping her fingers, she crossed off ‘explosives and run away’, ‘stealf run’, and several others. Tugging on her hair, she scowled, her feet kicking at the wooden logs laid on the floor.

Slowly she put down the pen and slammed her fists on the table. Shirin’s eyes wandered as they often did, muttering, “-maybe the stealth run isn’t actually impossible… no, no, practically impossible if I want to get Rie out as well…”

She turned to her left, sitting cross-legged. Her eyes eventually came to her torn pants, which broke at about her upper legs and exposed a whole heap of metal contact burns and bruises, and looked up at the four lanterns on the walls of the large, expansive room; a massive, crumbling emblem of the Aviere Shiresen carved into the ceiling. The grand othala gracing the ceiling seemed to slur slightly into the wrong places and partly cut off at the walls, something which Shirin chuckled at.

Still thinking about it all she stood up and began to pace the room. Closer to the walls she could hear loud, scattered footsteps outside, men screaming orders at other men. She started to grind her feet on a point on the gravelly floor, peering out the other side of the little slit in the wall and shouting at the men, “Anyone’s regretting their choices in life right now?”

No response. She was still out of ideas.

“F…” Her voice trailed off.

“...maybe promise those slaves freedom and then incite a massive revolt? But that’ll take way too long for this timeframe and at this rate they’ll… gah…” She muttered.

The air continued to stink of manure and wood pulp and behind her on one of the two tables tightly nestled between numerous contraptions and a dripping, stinking bowl in the corner a long barrel sat. A rectangular box with a wooden grip attached to its bottom in a crude, uneven configuration lay assembled behind it, making the beginnings of what could pass for a child’s recreation of a gun.

All alone in the room filled with metal parts and tools, her ramblings continued.

“...god, really, c’mon… no options… sure, maybe they have a stock of sokovs somewhere but I’d have to haul a massive spear to break even one open and it’d instantly kill Rie...” She continued.

“And really, though, exhausted? That guy says he’s exhausted? Fuck off, it’s not easy trying to be a genius… sorry, being a genius… and now he wants me to do the repor-”

Her eyes instantly widened.

A lightbulb burst in her head.

“That’s it.”

A determined expression on her face, she went back to the parchment and began writing away.