Chapter 2: Crossroads
Kikuyo Quill hopped off the wooden horse-drawn wagon at a crossroads. Its two cracked and splintered wheels made for a bumpy journey. But the vehicle’s swiftness compared to hers allowed her to walk the rest of the way home and arrive at the scriptorium by dusk.
After the farmer with a ruddy, rugged face and white beard nodded with a tip of his straw hat, Kikuyo answered with a nod of her own before starting down the path. The farmer didn’t ask for money when he invited her on the back of his wagon. She didn’t offer any, but a tension remained during the ride.
What was his silent price? How many rocks did he strike on purpose to garner a rolling of her form? If she suspected the price, why did she lay the leather-wrapped star chart in her lap instead of covering her bosom with it during the ride?
Kikuyo panicked at her own thoughts. She enjoyed many free trips before and didn’t probe the motivations behind the offer. For her part, she offered only her back during those rides.
What had changed? She asked herself while picking up her pace. Her raven bangs bounced over her face, hiding it from the world.
She easily surmised the reason for her escalating paranoia, given the strange metal bracer fastened to her slender forearm.
Kikuyo encountered odors first when she reached the flatter, more-traveled road winding toward the village that her scriptorium overlooked: wood smoke, roasting nuts, the pungent tang of the river tanneries. Then came the sound, a familiar commotion that usually settled her. The rhythmic clang of the blacksmith’s hammer. The shrieks of children who chased a scuffed leather ball. Barter at the midday stalls. It was a life built in the stubborn shadow of war, a defiant pocket of normalcy.
Yet, her lungs burned with the effort of keeping her panic contained. The familiar tangs and aromas of home, a scent she’d always associated with safety, now simply smelled like a cage. And the normally comforting hot needles in her legs from a long journey of discovery now felt like a prod from the farmer’s riding crop.
The bracer became a lead weight on her arm, a secret screaming into her skin. She pulled down her sleeve to conceal the metal, but she was sure everyone could see it. Hear it. That voice. That word.
Heresy.
It hadn’t been the wind.
A chatter of voices ahead broke her trance. A group of women from the village emerged from the road leading to the river trading hub. Their arms laden with bolts of cloth, rough-spun wools and, for a lucky few, shimmering silks probably bartered from a Son’s caravan at a steep price. Their faces flushed because of the walk and the thrill of gossip that Kikuyo caught in mid-discussion.
“I don’t understand. I thought the military campaigns moved south for the coming winter. Why would they shift back north?” A slim brunette asked as she adjusted a heavy roll of deep blue fabric on her shoulder.
“Why wouldn’t they? It’s war.” Another stout woman spoke while balancing a basket of dyed wool on her auburn locks. “But according to the rumors, it’s the Sons and Sisters proper heading north, flushing out rabble-rousers. You know how they are with heresy ruining their eternal war.”
Kikuyo’s blood ran cold. Heresy. Her fingers instinctively curled around the hidden bracer. Surely, they don’t speak of me. The thought was absurd, arrogant. She was nineteen. A nobody. An apprentice who spent more time discovering than cataloging. Mother and Father’s forces couldn’t have reacted this quickly to the artifact she found. Could they?
After failing to balance the heavy fabric roll on her shoulder, the brunette let it fall, hitting the ground with a dull thud. “I wish heretics would leave things be.” She fixed a dark stray bang. As sweat glistened on her brow. “I’m only Mother aligned because of the village’s closeness to the Valley of Peace.” Then the woman squatted and hefted the roll, repositioning it on her shoulder. “Can’t we humans stay out of it? Let the Titans have their war behind the scenes? I need one of those hot, Father aligned men to keep me warm during the winter.”
A laugh, sharp and sweet as poisoned honey, cut through the group. A woman stepped slightly apart from the others. Kaela. Her summers numbered in the mid-twenties, with a platinum beauty so fierce and deliberate it was a weapon. She tied her robes in a way that highlighted every curve. Kikuyo had heard enough whispers to know how she earned her silks.
“Sadly, it was never in the cards, ladies. We live on the war plains, in a border village no less. All of us are fodder in the Titan’s war.” Kaela said, her gaze locking onto Kikuyo with amused contempt. “We can’t all sell our souls for neutrality. Like our lithe scribe here.”
Kaela reached out and nudged Kikuyo’s shoulder with her fingers. Though playful, the touch sent a shock through them.
A thread of brilliant molten gold siphoned from the point of contact on Kaela’s finger. It flowed into Kikuyo’s arm, a sudden, shocking warmth spreading through her chest and down to her toes. She met Kaela’s eyes, certain the woman saw the thread. But Kaela’s blank, lidded eyes spoke otherwise.
Kaela stumbled as if the ground had lurched beneath her. The basket-hatted woman reached out a hand to steady Kaela. “Kaela, are the, ahem, humors back?”
Kaela blinked, a faint confusion crossing her flawless features before her mask of mockery snapped back into place. “I’m fine!” She said as she rolled her shoulders and rose back to her full height. “Karma for touching a facilitator, perhaps.” She rubbed her fingers together as if they’d gone numb.
But Kikuyo remained speechless as her gaze swept the area. The world had shifted. The color of the forest seemed richer. Her gray robes felt softer against her skin. She carried herself differently. Lighter. More substantial. More beautiful.
The women, unnerved by Kaela’s stumble and Kikuyo’s silent, staring intensity, moved on, their whispers now about the oddness of the wind and the coming night.
Kikuyo stood alone on the path, the hidden bracer humming against her wrist. It not only recalled visions, but acted as a thief. And she did not know what it stole, or what price it demanded.
The pilfered comfort from Kaela burned like a live coal in her chest, a strange confidence that shortened the walk back to the village while making it vastly more risky.
But Kikuyo held her chin high as she climbed the remaining distance up the scriptorium’s cobblestone steps. Her hips rolled with a sashay and airy footfalls.
Which concerned her and left Kikuyo with the nagging question.
What menace had she brought home from the ruins?