I Sing
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The Girl Who Must Not Sing Ch. 05 free porn video
‘Our friends tell me the Outflier is due on the Tuesday, Sire.’
‘Tuesday hmm? That’s inconvenient. Do they know a time?’
‘The afternoon, I should think.’
‘In that case, tire out the children in the orchards then settle them in classes. Any who can’t behave can go to their dorms or to punishment. I’ve a feeling we may need to start showing more than our prized handful of ‘orphans’ to these inspectors.’
‘How many rooms?’
‘However many it takes for him to get bored. Oh, but not the one with our recent escapee. He’s a smart lad, but less so than he likes to think. We don’t want to give him any foolish ideas, understood?’
‘Always, Sire.’
===
The swathing of darkness added a deeply sinister feel to the room as Eldrian stood upon the threshold. Yet, save the light, it looked no more sinister or unusual than any other room in the manor. One of the windows buckled outwards so that one could sit in it and stare at the scenery. Could have stared, rather, were it not boarded up along with all the others. A table and chairs stood in one section of the circular room with an oil lamp to accompany them. Several bookshelves made their homes between the windows but none held books, only trinkets.
‘Why’s it so dark?’ Eldrian wondered aloud.
‘She likes it that way,’ Dodeb whispered. He tiptoed a few steps inside before motioning Eldrian to follow.
The floor immediately within the doorway gave a loud creak as Eldrian stepped upon it. He flinched and Dodeb whirled round with a finger raised to his lips.
‘She doesn’t like being woken up,’ he hissed in the darkness.
Same as Iyda. Granted, the latter attacked with words while the former… who knew.
Dodeb set the tray down upon one of the tables that stood by a window. He removed the porridge and water, fiddled with the setup for several nerve-wracking seconds, then returned with the tray under his arm. ‘All done,’ he said as he brushed by.
‘That was easy,’ Eldrian remarked, the two of them walking back to leave.
‘It’s harder when she’s awake. It’s even worse if she’s already in here.’
‘Doesn’t she try to escape?’
Dodeb shook his head. ‘She can’t when she has the earmuffs on. She can’t use her magic to kill anyone. Well, she could but it’d hurt her too. Probably. I think.’
That explanation offered Eldrian little to no comfort.
‘If you ever have this job, and she’s in the room, just pretend she isn’t there. If you’re really really quiet, she might not even notice you. Sometimes she…’
Whatever Dodeb went on saying, as they began heaving the doors closed, shot past Eldrian’s ears. All his focus jumped to the other end of the shadowed room where stood the door to the Marisin’s quarters. He could hear her singing. That soft-echoing, vaguely ethereal voice which tried to wrap around him. Even through the dark he could see movement as a crack opened. Then they closed the door and the singing stopped.
‘Is that all?’ Eldrian asked in an effort to distract himself from the girl
‘Until lunchtime. Now comes the part that makes this job worth it. We’ve got free time until noon. Sometimes I go to the library or the garden. I guess you’ve got free time too.’
The library enticed him the most so he headed that way and Dodeb decided to come along. The shelves only spanned a single floor but the place still managed to hold the title of largest library that Eldrian had ever seen. They were the only two present so, apart from sounds of life elsewhere in the manor, their steps and exploration of the shelves were thunderous in volume.
‘This one’s my favourite,’ said Dodeb as he sat down at one of the tables.
Eldrian had yet to pick something out, he wandered back anyway to look at the sprout’s selection. The Complete Keladesh Bestiary read the cover in long, swirling letters.
‘It has lots of drawings in it.’ Dodeb began flipping through the pages and looking at the pictures. He didn’t appear to actually be reading any of it.
Back at the shelves, Eldrian picked out a book of stories named Aryonid’s Assorted Tales. He’d already read some of Aryonid’s other writings and most of them were jokes that never really happened. But that only made them better.
‘What’s that one?’ Dodeb asked. He blinked when he saw. ‘But there’s hardly any pictures, just words.’
‘Ah, I know.’ Eldrian flipped open the book to the first story and his eyes started moving across the page. Almost immediately he became aware that the sprout remained watching.
‘Can you really read all that?’ he blurted with incredulity.
Eldrian nodded without pausing the story.
‘What’s it say?’
This second interruption managed to break his focus and Eldrian took a tired breath. ‘Do you want me to read it to you?’
Dodeb pondered for a moment before closing his book and pushing it to one side.
‘Okay…’ And Eldrian began the story.
A hundred hundred years ago, when the great empire of Keladesh was but a dot upon the world’s grassy face, there lived two great lords of two great cities, Lord Nava of Nin and Lord Dava of Din. Nin stood upon the land known today as The Hushing Plains and his benevolence was known throughout his dominion. But Dava lorded over the mountains, that would one day be named Howling Pass, and his greed is still spat upon.
One day, a day not unlike this one, should the day you read this be just as sweltering, a peasant woman swooped down from the sky to land in Lord Nava’s court. She nearly collapsed then and there from hunger but, once her strength had returned, she begged Lord Nava for aid.
‘Please, oh benevolent lord of the bountiful field, Lord Dava of Din has struck poor folk their final deathblow. He has raised tariffs upon all food in his land such that anyfolk to eat even an apple owes his lordship a tree full.’
Now, the benevolent Lord of Nin had always been a patient man when it came to his rival of Din. But it is said that on that day even the cattle in their fields felt the sting of Nava’s outrage.
‘That greed-stricken fool would sell his own mother for a vase and a horse,’ Lord Nin hissed.
‘He already has, your lordship, just last week. Only it was a clay pot and a mule’
Well if the last straw hadn’t yet been broken upon the skysnake’s back, it was at that moment.
Lord Nava of Nin immediately set about concocting a plan to have his greedy rival done away with. And luck just so happened to be with him for Nava’s daughter, Jana, and Dava’s son, Kana, were madly in love with one another.
The plan flowed easily together, beginning with the arrangement of Jana and Kana’s marriage. Of course, for this, the greedy Lord Dava demanded considerable dowry. Twenty acres of land in the north, forty acres in the south, sixty orchards to be planted on the land and a river to be dug between them. He also demanded that the wedding be hosted by Lord Nava of Nin. Now Nava agreed to every bit of these requests, somewhat to Dava’s surprise…
‘…And,’ Nava added in his letter. ‘I shall add my prized stallion so that you may ride between your newly-earned lands.’
How could Dava be expected to turn down an offer like that?
So the plan entered its later stages and, under the cover of darkness, Lord Nava of Nin went to the greatest inventor in his dominion to commission the final piece.
The weeks rolled by until the day of the wedding arrived and the entire city of Nin came out in colors to pay their respects to the young couple. Jana and Kana, unaware of the plans, were nearly brought to tears over the beauty of their ceremony. But that beauty tarnished when Lord Dava demanded he receive his payment before any vows be exchanged.
Of course, the lands were not yet ready and could hardly be moved to Nin so only the stallion made an appearance. With all the
court of both lords waiting, Dava went about inspecting his prize. He checked the strength of its legs, the silk of its mane and the grit of its body.
‘And it’s teeth?’ Nava suggested. ‘Did you check those?’
Dava hadn’t so he moved to the front of the horse and pulled open the beast’s mouth to investigate its teeth. Immediately he sprung the trap that Lord Nava had commissioned and a bag of venomous hornets, secured between the horse’s jaws, tore open and swarmed all over Lord Dava’s greedy head. He fell to the ground beneath the barrage of stings and curled up, dying soon after.
Despite the grim beginning, the rest of Jana and Kana’s wedding went off without issue. In fact, so little did anyone care for Lord Dava that his twisted corpse remained where it fell until the following morning when Nin’s hounds dragged it away for breakfast. Nobody knows what happened to the murderous hornets as they were never caught.
So we come to the obvious lesson, never look a gift horse in the mouth.
‘Wow…’ said Dodeb once the story had finished. ‘It really says all that.’
Eldrian nodded. ‘The story’s called Nava the Nice and Dava the Dead. Do you not know how to read?’
‘I can too! I can read my name and the jobs on the board.’
‘And that’s it?’
Dodeb nodded. ‘I dihn know there was so much other things to read.’
Eldrian looked around the library and wondered to himself how that thinking could have come about. ‘This one’s just a story, though,’ he said as his gaze returned to the Sprout. Hardly anything in the story had a grain of truth about it, not even the time it had taken place. The Empire wasn’t anywhere close to a hundred hundred years old. But that didn’t matter, the book, and all the stories in it, were meant to be jokes.
At Dodeb’s request, Eldrian moved on to the next story in the book, then the one after and a fourth reading soon followed.
‘Dajoo want to come with me for the lunch one?’ Dodeb asked when the hour rolled around.
Eldrian pondered the possibility for a moment but decided against it. The girl would be fully awake and active, a perfect time for her to strike.
So you’ll leave Dodeb to fend for himself? a thought argued back. He shook it away, the sprout had been fine managing this job before, why should that change now?
‘Ah, okay. Can we keep reading after?’ Dodeb asked as the two of them headed towards the eating hall.
Eldrian nodded and they parted ways when Dodeb went towards the kitchen to collect the next tray of food. There weren’t nearly so many kids present for lunchtime. The cellar crew would be eating in the dark while those in the orchards feasted on a portion of their harvest.
Towards the far side of the room, Eldrian spied Yoled, Bossman and several other boys from his dorm, sitting together. He walked over and they spotted him immediately.
‘Hoy, it’s the runny home shrimp!’ shouted Yoled. A weak breeze picked up as his atoh blades carried him on wings of air before he landed on the table.
‘They caught you fast, home shrimp,’ said Bossman.
‘I went to the guards in River Run but they turned me in instead.’
‘You went to the guards?!’ Bossman burst out. He started cackling and the other kids joined in.
Eldrian rolled his eyes. This again? They were clearly misinterpreting the events. So he humored them. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘You escaped… and you went to the guards… straight away,’ Yoled heaved.
‘That’s right—’
‘You sure are stupid, home shrimp,’ said Bossman. ‘What’djoo think would happen, they’d take you in and send you home?’
Eldrian gritted his teeth. ‘The people here are bad. They keep a Marisin in the tower and they make all of us work all day.’
‘But who’s the guards going to believe, ah? Sire Mastro or some home shrimp?’
Eldrian almost started his rebuttal when he stuttered. When Bossman said it like that, it almost did sound stupid.
‘Besides,’ Yoled managed as his composure slowly returned. ‘It’s not so bad here. There’s lots to eat and it’s warm. And when your clothes get too worn out, they give you new ones.’ He wrapped his arms around his chest as though giving the shirt he wore a hug. ‘I remember when I used to fly past the clothes makers to find any scraps they forgot about.’
‘But they have to give us clothes, ah. Otherwise there’d be a hundred naked kids cleaning up after them.’
Once again the table burst into laughter as every boy imagined what that would be like. Eldrian sat down with them, torn between the relief that their attention no longer fell on him alone and the frustration that they could move on so easily. Not only that, but frustration that they were almost sounding… right. Eldrian tried to focus on the lunch instead.
Bread and fruit. The former looked a deep brown from the coarse wheat used to make it while the latter, a teep, had its juices oozing into the bread.
Maybe the jailers did see me, Eldrian thought to himself as he relived the moments of escape. Looking back, his trail should have been incredibly obvious. And the Vocal watching, too. Maybe they knew they didn’t need to bother chasing.
‘Did Miss Belamy give you punishment?’ asked a kid.
‘Of course she did! How long?’ Yoled blurted a little too loud.
‘They said a day but it went a day and a half. I fell asleep.’
‘Fell asleep?!’ the entire table exploded.
‘Nobody falls asleep. Vanet and the wrangler chief’d get super mad it they found out,’ said Bossman.
Another shrug as Eldrian swallowed a mouthful of fruit-soggied bread. ‘I doh’ know how, it just happened.’
The rest of lunch passed by with general chatter about whatever piqued the boys’ fancy. Afterwards they went their separate ways with Eldrian returning to the library and a Dodeb eager for more stories. But before he left the dining hall, Yoled pulled him aside.
‘Doh’ worry,’ said the Skytouched with his funny, northern accent. ‘Lotsa home shrimps try and run away and the ones who don’t get caught come back anyway cause it’s nicer here.’
Eldrian couldn’t tell if these words were meant to comfort him. They didn’t.
===
She ate in silence. She did everything in silence. The earmuffs made sure of that.
Doing what? the girl wondered, a spoon inches from her face. Eating… of course. A moment of forgetfulness.
The room looked a little brighter today. She couldn’t tell why. The boarded-up windows hadn’t changed at all and, if the outside were any indication, the sky had more than its share of clouds.
She felt alert, energized. A day for drawing, maybe. Or carving. Watching the world go by, mending her clothes, making new things with the scraps of fabric and other tidbits in her room. The girl couldn’t decide where to start. Nor could she remember the last time that she had been quite so driven to action. Not that long ago, surely. Last month, perhaps? The day she had whittled a miniature horse. Yes, that had to be it. Perhaps it had earned a friend.
And for myself? she wondered. Again the spoon stopped in midair.
No, that was silly. She didn’t need a friend for herself.
===
The week went on, Eldrian finding himself rotated to a new job every day. Cleaning, gardening, pest extermination, kitchen duty. Eventually Sunday came around and a half day of classes began. Book learning, as the majority of the other children called it. He’d been looking forward to this from the moment he knew of its existence. Finally some actual schooling.
They were rounded into groups, each with a ‘teacher’ whose sole job seemed to involve berating any kid who hadn’t figured out how to write their own name.
‘You can read your names, ah? We put them up on the boards in your dorms. Go take a look!’
Only a few were still struggling with name-writing, mostly the youngest children.
Hardly anyone could read. The words they knew best, and the ones the teachers were most interested in teaching, were any that appeared on their job boards.
After a couple of hours struggling with reading and writing, they had a short lesson on Keladesh history, consisting of a story being read aloud, before book learning came to an end.
That left Sunday afternoon where nobody, save Dodeb, had anything they needed to do. Most went up to the orchards and played games under the close supervision of several Skytouched and Vocal jailers. Miss Belamy constantly patrolled the manor in search of children to send to punishment.
Eldrian, Yoled and Iyda, meanwhile, found a place to sit in the lower gardens. A willow stood in the back, near where the walls kept them from falling into the ravine. The weeping tree sagged over a second pond that looked naturally-formed and far murkier. Perhaps it had always been there.
Tangles of ivy grew upon the ground and across the walls, climbing partway up the nets that stopped everyone from escaping, and, possibly, Vouiareli getting in.
‘They read us the story about when Dawn first met with the Nerinye,’ said Iyda, followed by a groan. ‘I’ve heard it before. They don’t remember who’s heard what, if they even care.’
‘Is that a good one?’ asked Yoled who lay upon a branch above them like a lazy cat.
‘No. There’s hardly any fighting. How can a story with Nerinye in it have hardly any fighting?’
Insects droned in the garden, adding to the sense of a warm, drowsy day.
‘If you had escaped…’ Yoled began.
When he didn’t finish, Eldrian looked up from his bed of ivy. ‘What?’
‘I’m thinking.’
Perhaps on a cooler day, he or Iyda might have questioned the logic of starting a sentence before thinking of its end. Instead they let it slip.
‘If you had escaped, where would’joo have gone.
The cogs in Eldrian’s head clicked together one by one. ‘Home,’ he said. Beyond that, he didn’t know.
‘Ah, but dajoo know the way? And’jood have to walk… I’d go to the ocean and swim in it.’
Iyda picked a stick out of the ivy and threw it at the Skytouched but it bounced off his branch. ‘That’s dumb, the Nerinye will eat you,’ she said.
‘Na, I can just fly away.’
‘Not if they bite your atohs off.’
Yoled didn’t have a response to that so Iyda continued. ‘They’ll come up from underwater and grab your legs. Then, soon as you try to fly off, they’ll chomp down on your atoh blades, one by one.’
‘She’s right. She’s seen it,’ Eldrian lied.
‘Ah, it happens all the time to stupid little flits who think they’ll be okay.’
For a while they only had the insects to keep them satisfied for sound. Finally Yoled said, ‘Maybe I’ll go south instead.’
This time it was Eldrian’s turn to prey upon him. ‘Then the giant hawk Galobi will get you. She’ll pluck you right out of the sky.’
‘What about east?’ the poor boy asked.
‘More Nerinye.’
‘And west?’
‘Some folk say they’ve seen a wolf the size of a mountain out there,’ Eldrian said with an evil smirk. That had to be a lie, though. What would it even eat?
‘See?’ said Iyda. ‘Nowhere’s safe but right here. You’ll just have to stay at the orphanage all your life.’
Later that day, when everyone had been forcibly retired to their dorms, the conversation turned its way towards the coming week.
‘Hoy home shrimp, you love book learning, ah’ Bossman suddenly called from across the room, looking up from his game of pebbles. ‘Is it a new month this week?’
Eldrian closed his eyes and counted forwards from the last date he knew. There hadn’t been many reminders here at the orphanage. Finally he said, ‘Ah, on Wednesday.’
‘New jobs!’ Yoled whooped. ‘No more scrubbing floors.’
‘Until they give you it again,’ another kid called out.
‘Do they have Dawn’s day here?’ Eldrian asked. From the way everyone fell quiet again, it felt as though he had made a mistake in inquiring about the holiday celebrated everyplace else on the first of the month.
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