The Unpeople

Chapter One

The bar was situated in one of Gemina's many narrow, shaded alleyways. They always were found in alleyways. It sat at the foot of the side-street's limestone steps, beneath an awning of clotheslines shrugging in a breeze that was barely there, and did its best to look as little like a bar as possible. Indeed, to those not in the know, it was just another in a row of cramped terraced houses, with its shuttered windows and a door that might have been painted once. Even upon stepping inside, it was still as inconspicuous as any of its neighbours. A narrow three-floored building, it had all of the commodities that would suggest it was home to a family or two. With a kitchen as scarcely furnished as any other, a couple of bedrooms and even a washroom on the top two floors, it was rarely empty. Something was always cooking, children always running up and down the stairs. It played its role well – just a typical home, far too busy to house a whole other function entirely.

It was easy to miss the trapdoor leading to the building's illicit cellar. Or, at least, it would have been, if Evelyn hadn't been ordered to investigate the place.

"That's a strange spot for a rug," she observed. She cocked her head at the threadbare patch that lay limp over the flagstones, under two of the dining table's four legs.

The owner of the establishment, a moustached man in his mid-forties, glanced nervously at Evelyn and her two companions. Between their red uniforms and the weapons at their belts, it was all too clear just who he was dealing with.

Not that Evelyn would have been all that intimidating by herself: at seventeen summers old and barely five and a half feet tall, she was not an obvious choice for a raid on a prohibited bar. But it was clear from her speech and her dark complexion that she was not Sursh, like most of the red soldiers. She knew the city and all of its little secrets. The same went for Ash, leaning pleasantly against the open doorway behind her. Sylva, however, was a different matter. Tall, pale, and just as blonde as her name suggested, she was the epitome of a Sursh soldier, standing straight-backed and stern-faced, cold eyes staring the man out as her fingers tapped against the hilt of her sword.

"It's, uh..." The man noticed Sylva's tapping, and laughed nervously. "It's always been there. I never noticed."

"You might wanna rethink it," Ash chimed in. "Doesn't really tie the room together."

"That so?" The owner laughed again, and Evelyn admired such dedication to a friendly atmosphere. Almost as if he had done nothing wrong. "Well, I'm no... designer, I'll give you that."

"Remove it," ordered Sylva, in a Sursh accent so thick that she rolled the 'r'.

"Well, I really don't see a need to –"

"Remove it," she repeated, taking a step forward. "Or I will do it myself."

The owner banged into his dining table as he retreated from her; sweat giving a sheen to his brow. "Well, if you say so..." he murmured, shifting the table legs away from the rug and bending down to lift the corner. Evelyn saw his eyes darting about the floor as he did so, trying desperately to think of a way out of this. Probably praying for the trapdoor in his floor to suddenly disappear, leaving both he and his family blameless. Evelyn raised an eyebrow. He should have thought about that before the red soldiers turned up at his door.

With the resignation of a man pulling a splinter from his palm, he threw the faded rug aside, revealing a small wooden trapdoor with a handle-shaped hole on one side.

"Lift it up."

He did so, and the trapdoor's underside was bundled with quilts, rags and more. Little need for such extensive soundproofing at present, in the gold of late afternoon, but a scattering of low voices was still audible through the hole in the floor. Mutterings and whisperings that caused the moustached man to flinch away as if they had instead been shouts.