Flux by Fielding Kim

Author:Fielding, Kim [Fielding, Kim]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

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His head hurt.

At first that was all that was important because his thoughts were gray and tumbled and he couldn’t have managed so much as his name. But very gradually his mind cleared a bit—enough for him to crack open his eyes, in any case—and then he remembered everything and he rolled on his side and retched into the dirt. Only after his stomach felt as if it had been turned inside-out was he able to sit up and truly take stock of his situation.

He was in the slave pen that they’d passed on the way to the palace.

He was within the inner fence, sitting on damp soil. Straight ahead of him little waves frolicked happily in the harbor, chasing each other in foam-capped exuberance like puppies at play. Behind him, three guards were gathered in the space between fences. They were quite obviously talking about him, and an animated discussion it was, but of course he couldn’t understand a word. And all around him in the big enclosure, men and women crouched or paced or simply stood as motionless as statues.

There was no sign at all of Ennek.

Slightly belatedly, Miner realized he was completely naked—except for the collar, of course—and he blushed and hunched in on himself, bending his knees and pressing his legs up against his body. This made the guards laugh uproariously.

Suddenly, Miner wasn’t embarrassed anymore. He was hurting and afraid and grief-stricken over Ennek’s potential fate, but most of all he was furious, angrier than he had ever been in his life, angrier even than he had been when he’d learned that the Chief had intentionally set up his son Camens to be caught in bed with that boy, angrier than when Miner had attacked the Chief with his sword.

He lurched to his feet a bit unsteadily and, unmindful of his nudity, ran at the fence. He was slightly gratified when the guards instinctively scrambled away, expressions of shock on their faces. “You bastards!” Miner yelled. He grabbed the iron poles and shook them with all his might, but they didn’t budge. “He was trying to save you all! I’m not a thing—none of us are bloody things to be bought and sold and caged like animals. We’re human beings and Ennek loves me!”

The guards must have tired quickly of his outburst because one of them approached the bars, yelled something incomprehensible at Miner, and jammed the butt end of a spear into Miner’s belly. Miner yelped and doubled over with pain. A few dribbles of bile spewed from the stomach he would have sworn was empty.

As suddenly as it had arrived, the anger washed out of him, leaving nothing but bitter despair and a pit of whirling emptiness. Miner backed away and sank down to the ground again. He wrapped his arms around his knees and looked up at the sky, which was beginning to grow purple with nightfall. There were no hovering birds. He wondered how long it would be before Akilina grew impatient for their return.

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