Kile of Zumada

31. Blood on the Sand

Chapter 31: Blood on the Sand

Three days passed before gremels arrived. In that time, Lija and Alora both finished their books.

"This book barely covers anything before the Empire found us," Lija said, "there was an entire war between Triski and Medrani over which version of the Code to follow that just isn't mentioned."

"Well, there's not much physical evidence for it," Alora argued.

"Nonsense, there are literally buildings still in ruins from it. There's an entire oasis of rotting filth from it."

Alora raised an eyebrow, "really? Huh...I'll have to go there. Maybe write a proper history then," she teased.

As for Alora's book, when Lija asked her what she thought of it the response nearly gave her a heart attack.

"I'm sorry, it wasn't really my thing."

Lija felt her stomach trying to turn itself over, as she asked, "oh, why is that?" with as much cool and tact as she could muster.

"Well, and this is totally a me thing, when we first started talking about it, we talked about Treatise of the Prince, right? And that was a funny book, so I think I was expecting Blacksmith's Bookkeeper to be funny too. When it wasn't I just...couldn't get into it. Like I said, my fault. It was cute though!"

Lija felt the biggest relief of her life upon hearing that. "Oh. Okay, I'll keep that in mind for next time."

The rest of their time in the town was less than helpful. There seemed to be two types of people in the City of Anarchs. The first were usually elderly, usually service workers, and always miserable. People who had been in the town since the time of Gerschwin and weren't happy about it the changes Alexis had brought with her. Struggling day to day to get by and helping people as best they could. People who cared. The second were insular, quiet and rude. Whenever any of the group would try and ask them a question, they'd get as terse an answer as possible and on occasion a bit of "friendly advice," the sort that was really just a veiled threat.

When Alora asked where they got their food from, the shopkeeper sniped back, "here's some advice, kid. Don't be asking questions you're not sure you want the answer to. I've got food, you've got money. That's all that matters."

There was a surprising amount of Shenzik milling around the town, and Lija did everything in her power to avoid them. Kile knew better than to step on that land mine at this point in time as well.

Either way, it was three days and they finally retrieved their gremels, packed their things onto them, and set out.

Kile loved all living things, but he couldn't help but think of gremels as ugly. Long necked with coarse fur, huge black beady eyes, and a lip that sagged to make it look like they had an overbite. They also had a huge lump on their back. They always looked disinterested in everything, and were generally slow animals. They were known for spitting at things they disliked with a particularly gloppy and disgusting spit. These ones had white fur, and blue patches on their noses. They picked out one, strapped their cart to it, and walked with it through the desert.

"Why couldn't we just use a longone?" Alora asked.

"They don't do well in the heat," Kile answered, "they might endure for a while but repeated journeys would kill them. Gremals live for the heat."

"I see," Alora said.

They could see the tunnel from Armor City, and from it, a group of people riding on Longones there way. Seven of them and Kile could see from here they were Poredo because one of them was carrying the war banner.