Page 15 of Veil of Vasara (Fate of the Five #1)

CHAPTER 15- THE ACCIPEREAN

W e’d had hoods on our heads for fifteen hours now, I guessed. I’d become slowly used to tracking time roughly, based on changes in light intensity and temperature. My thighs were chaffed from sitting on the saddle of a horse all this time without any riding gear.

Not that I’d ever worn any riding gear, I just knew it was something you were supposed to wear.

I sat back-to-back with the man who had been trapped with me in the cart earlier. While I was on the saddle, he was not. We’d barely had the time to glimpse a fraction of our saviour’s face, before they had concealed our sight, and bound our hands.

Some saviour .

I smirked under my hood at the foolish hopefulness I had felt in that moment.

More like captor.

Someone was dragging our horse along, and somewhere nearby, there must have been a separate horse carrying the woman and child who had been trapped with us. I could still hear the girl’s cries, growing weaker by the hour. At one point they had been so loud the man whose back I was sitting against inadvertently gripped my hand. I had gripped it back. We had been holding each other’s hands since.

It was disconcerting, to touch someone. I had forgotten what it had felt like. I had only ever known someone’s touch when it had been intended to hurt me, beat me, grab me, slap me, kick me, or shove me. Those or accidental touches, like the passing of an object, or the strapping to a chair to be drained.

A touch like this, holding someone’s hand, it felt so new to me. Both comforting and uncomfortable. In truth, I had only continued to grip his hand because of my twisted curiosity over the sensation.

It was growing darker; day was turning into night. The temperature was dropping. We were only wearing the rags given to us in the chambers far below Audra, so the wind felt as if it were laughing at our excuse for clothing. I started shivering violently. In response, the man squeezed my hand tighter. Soon, he was shivering too.

About an hour after that, our horses came to a sudden stop. Someone very roughly grabbed me by the waist and shoved me off the horse and onto the ground. I could hear the same thing happening to my companions. I was still barefoot. The ground felt…wet? Earthy? We were in some sort of woodland. That much was already obvious based on the smells surrounding us, but not many places had this level of vegetation or rich…

Jurasa. Jurasa did, or so I’d heard.

We were pushed forwards in a certain direction, with no consideration for our frozen, confused state. I debated asking where we were going but didn’t see the point. I knew I would find out soon enough.

The girl started crying again.

“Shut her up!” a male voice said to someone.

“What do you expect me to do?” another male voice replied defensively.

“I don’t care, whatever you need to do. We didn’t come all this way for this brat to finish us off.”

“Alright, alright, let me deal with it.”

We all stopped. Footsteps sounded to our left, growing more distant as they approached the girl. The woman, her mother, perhaps, was begging for mercy. My breathing rate increased. It hit me then how exhausted I was. Each breath felt like a monumental effort for my intercostal muscles. All my muscles were weak, after all, I’d been stuck underground for years. Vessels were able to exercise, it was encouraged, to keep us ‘healthy’ and ‘drainable.’

But there was only so much exercise you could do, after killing one of the guards.

Eventually, by way of a cloth in her mouth I assumed, the girl's crying became muffled and then stopped.

The man returned behind us. “Done, are you happy?”

“Thank you.”

Thank you? These two men must be friends, or friendly at least. They didn’t sound the type of men who would sell people as captives. Then again, I hardly knew how that type would sound. I was only familiar with the kind who would.

After walking for some time, my legs began to tremble incessantly, which only got worse as we made our way uphill. At the top, we arrived at what seemed like a campsite. I could make out the sounds of a tent flapping open and closed and the smell of campfires being lit and burning.

We were dragged into one of the tents. I could tell because the wind had stopped snapping at my skin so harshly and the lighting changed from that of a silver glow to candles and flamed torches.

Without meaning to, I fell to the ground, my legs gave out on me almost instantly.

The man I had been travelling with heard my fall. He reached out with his bound hands, trying to find me, patting at my shoulders.

But before he could go further, someone yanked my hood off, and his, and the woman's, and the child’s.

I was right, we were inside a tent, a spacious one. A large table sat at its centre, surrounded by a few chairs and a large bed to the left. Maps, scrolls, weapons, and clothing were strewn about the place in a non-orderly fashion.

Someone stepped inside from behind us.

“This is them?”

“Yes,” one of the possibly non-captive selling men replied.

A large boot stopped next to me. I barely had the strength to look up.

“How long have you been a Vessel?” He didn’t sound interrogatory, but he didn’t sound patient about my answer either.

I was still looking at his feet. I debated saying nothing. I didn’t know who these people were or what they would do with such information, but the thought about what they might do if I remained silent was enough for me to sigh out.

"What year is it?"

"1118," he replied.

I swallowed, hiding the shock tearing at my chest.

“Nineteen years,” I half whispered, processing it myself as I spoke.

“Shit,” one of the men said. “That’s…they don’t usually survive that long.”

“No,” the man who had asked me added. “They don’t.”

I didn’t know that. I didn’t know I was meant to be dead already.

I wondered if that might have been better.

The man crouched and lifted my chin. I knew my tired eyes could barely stay open, that my mouth was cracked and my face ashen, but I didn’t care. He examined my facial features with great curiosity and confusion.

“Your hair is coppery but…” He squinted and went mute for a few seconds. “Where are you from?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

I took in his facial features. He was older, his dark brown skin indicating he was from Zeima. His long braided hair was dark, but laced grey with age, and his face was decorated with slight wrinkles. One of his thick eyebrows had a deep scar across it.

He closed his eyes for a moment as he pressed two fingers to my forehead.

He stood so quickly I almost fell to the ground as he let go of my face.

“She’s an Acciperean,” he said to the men who had brought us here.

“Oh…well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” one remarked casually. The Zeiman didn’t answer him.

“What about you, young man?” he asked my travelling companion.

Clearly seeing no reason to put himself through possible punishment either, he responded, “I am too. So are they.” He nodded to the mother and child, sparing them the same questioning.

“How did you find them?” the Zeiman asked the two men behind us.

“The same way we always find them.”

“Bring Nyla here, now," the man said commandingly. “And Riece.”

“Yes?” Riece said.

“Bring them some clothes and get them some food. And bring the blades for the shackles”

“Alright, but we don’t have much…err… women's clothing.”

“We don’t have much clothing,” I muttered under my breath, still shivering in my thin rags.

“What the lady said,” the Zeiman responded to Riece, smiling.

Once Riece and his possible friend left the tent, the Zeiman spoke.

“I’m Yaseer. A Darean.”

“Lucky you,” I muttered again. I’m not quite sure where my audacity came from. Exhaustion, hunger, and pain, I supposed.

“Luck, is it? Acciperean or Darean’s, we are all slaves. None of us are free.”

Embarrassment clutched my chest. I sighed heavily. “Sorry,” I said. It was all I had the energy to say.

“There is no need for apologies. I know what you allude to. Accipereans are hunted far more forcefully. You are drained more often and more harshly. You are fewer in number.”

“Yes,” I groaned, wondering why he had bothered to refute my statement if he agreed with it.

“What are your names?”

“Baz,” the man next to me said.

“Prya,” the woman said, “This is my daughter Enala.”

“And you?” the man asked me.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, swallowing to try and regain some moisture in my throat between words.

“The drainings?”

“No, I just…don’t know it.”

I could feel Baz looking down at me with sympathy. I still didn’t have the energy to raise my head up or stand.

“Choose one then,” Yaseer instructed.

I laughed. It was the kind of laugh that made me sound insane and ended with a loud sigh.

I’m not sure I wanted a name. There was something about having no name that made some of the pain easier. I didn’t know who I was, but I didn’t remember who I was beforehand either. I’m not sure I wanted to start discovering myself. I’m not sure I’d like what I’d find or be able to bear the fact that person was lost.

“It doesn’t matter,” I spoke.

“A name is everything…you are nobody without a name.” Yaseer proclaimed.

“Then I am nobody.”

“Nobody is nobody.”

“Well, I have no name so that must make me nobody,” I mumbled at the floor.

Yaseer fell silent for a few seconds then said.

“Nemina.”

I found the strength to raise my eyes up at him.

“Nemina. It means Nobody. That is what we will call you.” He sounded pleased with himself.

I knew my upper lip was raised in a scowl at his suggestion, but I was too tired to hide it.

“So Nemina…tell me, what can you do?”

“What do…” I caught my breath “What do you mean?”

“What are your abilities?”

Baz, as if sensing my struggle intervened. “Not everyone has fully manifested theirs before they're…taken. We don’t get to find out. There’s no way for us to truly experiment with them. We might find out by mistake, but we don’t really know.”

It dawned on me then. “You…you’ve never been a Vessel?” I asked Yaseer.

Yaseer looked almost guilty as he replied, “I have not.”

Baz and I looked at each other in surprise.

“So, you are lucky then,” I retorted.

Yaseer laughed. “If you can call running for your life luck.”

“I would, in comparison,” I said, with a clear and loud voice, for the first time during the conversation.

“And I am sorry you have endured it. Truly.”

I sighed, embarrassed again. This man had a way of making me feel like an impudent child. Even though everything I had said had been fair. Mostly.

Yaseer continued. “I want to help you. I want to help the others.”

“Why did you drag us here like captives then?” Baz asked, sounding doubtful.

“We always do that. To protect our location.”

“Who do you think we would tell?” Prya spoke up.

“Nobody in particular.” He smirked in my direction, clearly thinking about the name he had given me. “But I would rather be safe.”

It was hard to argue with his logic, but it still felt…flawed somehow.

Riece and his possible friend returned, carrying an eclectic mix of clothing that had clearly come from each of the Five Kingdoms.

“This is all we had.”

“This is fine,” Yaseer confirmed. “Where’s—"

“She’s still in Kalnasa.”

Yaseer nodded. “Of course.”

He spun his head in our direction. “Riece will bring you some food and water. In the morning, we will talk.”

“Talk about what?” Baz asked.

Yaseer looked over his shoulder as he left the tent.

“About war.”