Chapter Twelve

‘Warden Eridian controlled the portion of the afterlife consisting of greed and hatred. There those who had taken more than they could consume were punished with famine and disease.’ 

After talking with Creaton, Caid needed to get back to the tunnels and think. He wanted to figure out what his position in all of this was. In the past, he would have left it all alone and let the politicians handle the politics. He would have closed his eyes to the overseer’s disappearance. If the city had gone up in smoke, the Wardens would have waited out the flames.  

Now he lacked protection from the Wardens. With all that had happened, he no longer knew how he felt about everything.  

Could he sit back, and watch thousands of people die at the whims of those who pulled the strings?  

Then again, why should he get into it? He could hunker down and wait it out. It mattered little who was in power. What would change if the overseer were killed? 

Caid pulled back the grate to the tunnels, climbing down into the darkened silence. Down here, he was safe from it all. He was away from everything. At least he thought he was.  

When Caid finally found Alis, she was surrounded by about twenty slave men and women, each recognizable by the red X marks above their temples.  

Caid froze in his tracks.  

“What is this?”  

Alis turned around from her conversation and a smile crept across her face.  

“You are back!” she shouted as if she was certain he had gone to die.  

Caid nodded. “I am back, but what is this?” he asked again, spreading his arms out to point at the gathered group of slaves.  

Alis turned toward the slaves.  

“These are the members of the slave council. Technically, there is no actual slave council, but these men and women make the major decisions and the others listen to them.”  

The seers of the districts and the nobles, he assumed, made most of the decisions about the slaves. What decisions were left to make?  

“What are they doing here?” Caid started defiantly but quickly realized these tunnels belonged to Alis. He was here as a guest. Why would it be up to him who else she could pull into her sanctuary? Still, some part of him felt violated by their presence, and that part of him felt Alis should have asked him before bringing them in.  

“Caid, I had once told you about my family and why we built these tunnels. Well, these were the men and women my mother and father brought into the loop. Now that my parents are missing, we need someone else to take up their mantle and be the leader of the movement.” Alis paused for a moment, waiting for Caid to reply, but he stayed quiet.  

“We have been debating about who that should be.” Alis looked at Caid as if, urging him to understand, but he had no desire to accept the leadership position.  

“This is the man you claim can lead us?”  

One slave stepped forward. Alis nodded in reply.  

“This is Caid, and he was once a warden, Hav’Un.”  

The slaves all nodded.  

“Once a warden, but not a warden any longer?” Hav’Un asked. 

Caid felt odd. They discussed him as if he were not even in the room with them.  

“I am no longer a warden. And to answer your question, I do not intend to lead anyone anywhere.”  

Caid glanced at Alis, whose expression didn’t change. The slave ignored his comment, waiting for Alis to reply to his question.  

“Clearly he will take a little convincing, but this is the man who is best suited to lead us where we need to go.”  

Caid stepped forward, waving his hands. “I am right here, and I already replied to your question. I am not leading anyone, and I don’t plan to get into this.”  

Alis held up her hand to stop him from moving forward any farther. “I am sure you have your reluctances on leading, Caid, but I think you will find you are more than suited to do so.”  

“Not happening, end of story.”  

The slave man continued to speak to Alis. “You say he can offer intelligence on how to fight, but he is barely bigger than I am.”  

Caid felt his skin getting hot. The slave wasn’t listening, and Alis only encouraged him. 

“I am not giving you intelligence on anything,” Caid said again, louder this time.  

“Will not, or cannot?” Hav’Un asked.  

Caid could hear no malice in the man’s words, but it failed to make him feel any better about the questioning. 

“Cannot, will not, it doesn’t matter; neither way will it happen.”  

The slave finally nodded. “I do not think an outsider with no fighting skills who was kicked out of the Wardens will be of any use to our cause. I understand, Alis, that your mother and father started this revolution, but they are not here to finish it, and I don’t see how we can either.”  

Alis turned toward him and the rest of the slaves. “Just wait and give this a chance. Tell Caid your stories. Make him understand why we need him. Then you will all see this isn’t a lost cause. We can still do this.”  

Caid turned to walk out the door.  

“You, stop!” Alis yelled.  

Caid stopped, and for a moment his appreciation of Alis’s actions blanked his anger. 

 “I am begging you to listen to what these people have to say. After that, you can go, but I’m sure you won’t want to.”  

Caid sighed, having no interest in listening, but Alis had housed him and saved him more than once. The least he could do was pretend to listen.  

“You have one hour and that is all,” Caid said while turning to take a seat by the wall.  

“Good,” Alis said. She turned back to the gathered slaves.  

“Ha’Ane, will you start for us, please?”  

Caid recalled the woman who stepped forward. She had been one of the women sitting in the clothing shack for the slaves, the place where he had traded his warden garb for slave attire. While Ha’Ane was much older than everyone else in the room, her dark eyes still showed a strong will and a determined mind.  

“Slavery isn’t just chains on the skin or mining work for the hands, although, it does a number on both.” The woman lifted her hands, showing scars all along her palms, fingers, and arms. “Mostly, slavery is about the shackles put on the mind. They numb the mind with propaganda. They beat your will down with words of discouragement. They hold your soul under the water of hate until it drowns. Then they keep your soulless, mindless body alive until they finish with your shell.” 

Caid could see maybe not all this woman’s soul had vanished from her though. Something about her demeanor said  she had a lot of courage and fight left in her old bones.  

“Everyone here has seen demons with their own eyes. Everyone here has tribulations that would make a normal person quake in their shoes. Yet not a single person here is allowed to feel, to mourn, or to emote at all. That is not for the slaves¾emotions have no place with an ax and rock.”  

The old woman looked directly into Caid’s eyes.  

“Emotions have no place in slavery, but they are a vast part of human life, which tells me one thing¾slavery is the thing that has no place. I don’t know if what Alis says about you is true. I don’t know if you could save us from this wretched life even if you wanted to, but I know no man, woman, or child deserves to live the way they make us live.”  

The old woman turned, shuffling her feet back into the crowd of slaves. Alis turned to Caid.  

“You have to help for the part of you that still loves.” Her eyes were watery, but Caid noticed she didn’t allow herself to cry.  

Caid tried to sympathize with the old woman’s story of emotions and slavery, but it was hard to grasp what these people had been through. It was hard to understand their labor and strife. Somewhere in his mind, he knew that it indeed was wrong. No person should be shackled, beaten, and forced into labor for no reward. He had been forced into the depths of the Wardens, taken from his home, and forced to kill for the benefit of a group. In the end, Caid had come to enjoy what he was chosen to do, whereas no one ever enjoyed being a slave.  

“I can’t lead you.”.  

None of the slaves showed any visible signs of being let down. Actually, none showed any signs of emotion. The woman was right their emotions had been drained out of them.  

“You will regret not helping when the work in the mines is complete,” said Hav’Un, the man who questioned him when he arrived. “I have worked the mine for twenty-five years and never complained about the labor. The work is hard, but it makes you hard as well. We do not know how to fight, but slaves are strong, even though our frames are small. But none of that will matter for us once the work in the mines is done.”  

Caid held up his hand. “What work are you talking about?”  

“I do not know what the work is. What I know is it is important enough my family goes missing without a word. It is important enough the Envoy set guards at entrance to the southern part of the mines. Important enough even the seers and wardens come to visit our little section of the world.”  

Caid let out a sigh. It was all too overwhelming.  

“I need to go for a walk.”  

He turned and walked toward the door without giving Alis a chance to ask him to stay.  

*** 

The night air cooled his heated face, but that was the only pleasant thing about the evening. Caid observed the city around him and saw everyone seemed to have lost their minds over the course of the day.  

Pockets of citizens robbed stores. Others ripped tarps from closed merchant stands. Men, women, and children alike screamed as pickpockets ran rampant. General chaos continued throughout the night.  

This is exactly what Caid had expected would happen. Once he had heard the news of the overseer disappearing, he assumed it was only a matter of time before the city folded in on itself. Everything would crush down, flattening it unless something changed.  

The envoys lined the streets in such large numbers Caid was amazed anyone was brave enough to do what they did, but the envoys stayed mostly stationary, as if they were only there as props. Even they seemed to fear what happened. How long could you oppress people before too much was enough? 

In a situation like this, it was better to keep your head down or stay indoors. Unfortunately for Caid, his home clustered with slaves and false hopes. His real home filled with wardens turned criminals. His entire life pulled out from under him.  

A new life replaced the old one, filled with other’s expectations. Expectations to lead others, expectations he had already failed to live up to once.  

Caid tired of failing everyone who put faith into him. Galmont was right when he said leadership took sacrifice and dedication, but Caid had not been capable of coming to terms. Could he do it now? Could he lead a rebellion he knew nothing of? The bigger question was, could he let another group of people down by avoiding it?  

Caid turned another corner, continuing his walk. His head filled with everything that had happened in the last week. Mostly it overflowed with ways he could have avoided it all. Things he should have said differently. Situations he could have navigated in different ways. It was much easier to realize what he did wrong once he had already made the mistake.  

A small boy bumped into Caid. “Sorry, sir! Please don’t hurt me!”  

The boy cowered, holding his hands up over his head in fear; Caid turned away.  

“Go home, boy,” Caid yelled back to him.  

Caid heard the clack of shoes as they smacked on the cobblestones. Caid found a part of himself hoping the boy made it home.  

Caid heard screams coming from the alley to his left. Some part of him wanted to help, but the other part of him¾the part that won out­¾wanted to keep his head down and continue walking away from everything that weighed him down. His training and his past life were too strong to overcome. He had been told to ignore it all, and right now his mind had no willpower to fight the training. He wanted to close his eyes and forget everything that was happening, then open them again and be in his bed in the Warden’s compound, waking up to Geth pounding on his door. That would never happen again, though, no matter how much he wanted it. He felt like a child for even wishing it. 

As he walked farther down the street, the screams faded, replaced by the laughter of malice intent; men who wanted to watch the walls crumble.  

Caid lifted his head. A party of men pushed around an older gentleman. The man dressed in a nice wool coat, his hair touching the base of his neck. The nice coat told Caid the older man had some money, and the length of his hair also indicated the man had some importance. He was probably a minor official in city hall, but in times like these, any power could get a person killed without mercy. 

Caid ignored Alis’s voice inside his head and turned down another side road, avoiding confrontation with the group. He doubted they would have posed much of a threat, but there was no use playing hero. People were committing crimes all over the city, but Caid felt even if he spent all night trying to quell the smoke, he still would never put out the fire.  

Caid gave the air a sniff¾the thought of fire may have been more than just a metaphor. Caid took another turn back onto the larger main street. He sniffed the air again¾smoke. He quickened his pace toward the smell. He was unsure why, but something made him feel anxious. The farther north he went, the stronger the smell of the smoke became. Turning off the main street, he headed onto the road that led directly to the seer’s home. Caid only made it a quarter of the way up the winding path before seeing thick smoke silhouetted against the brightness of the moon.  

The smoke hung like a large rain cloud spreading to fill the night sky. The smell here was strong, making Caid cough. He turned another corner and there, blazing against the backdrop, was the home of the seer.  

Caid’s mind went blank, but his legs kept moving, his feet pounding the cobblestones. He moved off the winding street into the grass, racing past the screaming guards.  

Caid had his mind set on one thing.