A Prince of Mars by Frank Chadwick

Author:Frank Chadwick [Chadwick, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction, Steampunk
Publisher: Untreed Reads Publishing
Published: 2014-05-06T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Five

“Martian Crossroads”

1.

Annabelle wanted to like this city, this first city on Mars she would experience, but it was difficult. It stood astride the junction of five grand canals, broad and deep, and she imagined the waters crowded with multi-coloured sails, and the docks and jetties swarming with longshoremen unloading embroidered fabrics, beautiful porcelain, and exotic fruits from far-away kingdoms.

But the water had fled the canal centuries earlier, the docks had long since been torn down, and the once-grand city had crept down the banks of the canal and into the dry basin, becoming more ramshackle and tawdry with each step. The tall, simple buildings atop the canal embankment, though now mostly deserted and fallen to ruin, stared down through empty-window eye sockets at their architectural offspring with dismay. The newer buildings were both more complex and less substantial in construction, pieced together as they were from the mismatched stone, brick, and tile bones of their ancestors. The once-austere white or pale tan stone, having made the journey down the embankment, had also acquired new raiment—garish colours washed unevenly over all, here peeling, there fading, unmistakable evidence that whatever dignity and elegance the city once possessed had departed with the receding waters.

“Well, it certainly is colourful,” Nathanial said with a measure of approval which surprised Annabelle. Had his taste deserted him altogether, or was her own judgment poisoned by her physical discomfort?

At the mid-day break she had walked the entire time, using a crutch as well as her peg; she was far from being able to walk unassisted. The flesh on the bottom of her stump had grown chafed and irritated, not yet having developed the desired degree of callous. Her back protested the unfamiliar and awkward strains put on it. Her right hand and shoulder ached as well, as the crutch cut off the circulation to her arm and she had periodically to rest and shake her hand to restore sensation. Nathanial had offered to make a different crutch, one easier on her arm, but she refused. That pain, at least, had some therapeutic value; it encouraged her to put as much weight as she could on the stump, and the more she did so, the sooner she could dispense with the crutch altogether.

Nathanial and Kak’hamish fussed a great deal over her, particularly during her exercises, and although she appreciated their affection and genuine concern, she had grown tired of the solicitude. What she wanted most was to regain her physical self-sufficiency, no longer dependent on her well-meaning care givers. If pain was the shortest path to that independence, so be it.

She looked back down the canal basin to see if this moment of philosophical self-examination had opened her eyes to the barbaric splendour of the city of Abak’hn.

No.

Normally she would not have seen the city until they arrived, as the large ruumet breehr obstructed her view forward from her wagon, but today she rode in Ambassador Jed-An’s carriage, which had taken the lead. She sat on the elevated seat beside his driver and could see clearly past the team of eight gashants.

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