Folded Earth by Tracy Eire

Author:Tracy Eire [Eire, Tracy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-09T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8 – The Onus

It was a cool and misty morning, and Ora stood by an establishment that served Outriders through the back door. She sipped her hot tea and otherwise seemed to intimidate the young delivery men bringing in fresh milk. The server waiting on Airic was a young male, and kept sneaking looks in her direction while Airic stood waiting. She stepped aside for the vats of milk and looked up through the narrow apse between buildings at the sunny, misty sky.

Thank you for this day, Powers.

She sipped her tea.

I’m grateful for this day.

She also felt very relieved she hadn’t lost any Outriders the night before. Airic came away from the back of the bakery with a bag of day-old bread and rolls. Ora was astonished by this. The Townies baked bread in fluffy white clouds rather than flats, and Redword swore by the stuff. He’d managed at least one convert in the crew.

“Gonna tote the whole bag back to camp. You’ll have some of it today,” Airic smiled.

“Yeah?” She shook out her drying hair and asked, “How much did that set you back?”

“Redd’s money. I’m just the messenger.”

“You wish,” she said and then shook out her hair. She looked around her for him, but Redd appeared to be running behind. “Well… he has a first-rate job, so, I suppose it’s all right for him to blow money on Townie bread.”

“It’s good stuff,” Airic reassured her, “you’ll see.” He tied the bag of bread to tongs on his sword belt and they kept walking toward the dockyards. Moving around had hurt so badly at first, but now that her muscles were loosening, Ora was beginning to feel much better.

She finished her tea and Airic had wiped the cup and tucked it away with the bread.

Ora could hear the soft slap of water against wooden docks and could see Jhan Kessian’s buildings ahead. The streets here were busy. Draft-horse drawn trollies hunched along with people darting by in all directions, many of whom were carrying heavy burdens back and forth to the building where freight was stored. A ship was coming in to dock from the river as she watched.

Involuntarily, she looked up at the mountain where, though they couldn’t be seen from so great a distance, she now knew about the Locks. Ora wondered if other Outriders had happened upon them and not known what to make of them. What a clever invention they were. She smiled involuntarily, and Airic caught her, with a wry smile of his own.

“Sun-worshiper,” he mistook her happiness, but… was close. She did love sunshine. Short, mild nights full of moonlight and long, glorious days of sun were part of Ora’s vision of an after-world.

“Are we going in the front?” Airic shook out the muscles in his arms and looked at the double doors and liveried guards in speculation before she headed for the massive gates that led around the flank of the building and onto the expansive dockyards.

As she went over, Kessian’s

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