Lynette winced as she thought back to that night. She’d been just as bad as any of the fanatics in the main city, ranting about the demons being evil and trying to cast them out of the village, no matter how many times Koradan had tried to explain himself.
“Don’t try to solve the whole problem in one night,” Koradan advised her, seeing her inner struggle. “You’re doing a great job in getting this small village to accept us. One step at a time, okay?”
She managed a small smile. “You’re far more patient with all this than I would be.”
Koradan laughed. “Patience is something I’ve had to learn the hard way. But life’s been gracious in giving me very, very many opportunities to learn it.”
“Sounds like there’s a story there,” Lynette said, as she finished her meal. “Would you like some more?” she offered, seeing that Koradan’s plate was also empty.
His face lit up in delight, but then the expression was quickly squashed. “Are you sure that would be okay? I wouldn’t want to leave you short.”
Lynette’s brow furrowed as she looked at him. “Have we been feeding you enough?” she asked, before she could think better of it. “Give me an honest answer. We’ve been guessing a lot of things about you, and probably getting most of it wrong, so it’s about time we stopped to actually ask your opinion on some of these things.”
Koradan opened his mouth to reply, but the words didn’t make it past his lips. Was he too polite to say he was still hungry? Too afraid of offending her? Giving up on waiting for a reply, she fetched the rest of the quiche from the stove and brought it back to the table. “How much would you like?”
“Well, I… um…”
“Did you not like it?”
“No! I mean yes. It was delicious,” he clarified, and she thought perhaps he looked a little embarrassed.
Taking the easy way out, she set the dish down next to him. “Help yourself. I’m serious,” she added, at his dubious look. “Take as much as you want.”
Koradan eyed the dish hesitantly. Then he glanced up at Lynette again.
Then, finally, he slid the entire rest of the pie onto his plate, along with the leftover vegetables that she’d boiled. It was about twice as much as he’d already eaten, and Lynette suspected that if there had been more available, he’d have taken that as well. She kept her face studiously neutral, so as not to embarrass him, but made a mental note that she was going to have to talk to the other families about making sure the salases were given enough to eat.
“What else would you like to know about me?” Koradan asked, picking up his fork again. “I have a lot of questions about humans, but maybe I should let you go first.”
A whole flood of possible questions filled Lynette’s mind, ranging from the profound to the mundane. She settled on what she hoped was an inoffensive middle ground. “How did you learn to ride a vreki? Are there training schools, or do you have to pass a test to be chosen? How does it happen?”
“Once every five years or so, each female vreki will lay an egg. If that female is one of the ones who serves the Stone King, then when the egg hatches, she’ll choose a boy from an upper class salas family to be raised alongside the hatchling, so that they can learn to communicate with each other and learn each other’s culture. It’s a great honour to be chosen by a vreki mother. By the time the pair of them are about twenty years old, they’ve formed an unbreakable bond. The salas has learned to communicate telepathically, the vreki has learned to take instructions from his or her rider, and then they’re enrolled in military training to learn to put those skills to use as formal members of the royal guard.”
Koradan had a look of chagrin on his face, and he cleared his throat. “That’s the way it’ssupposedto go. It was quite different for me.” Lynette leaned forward and rested her chin on her hand, sensing a juicy story coming up. “I was never supposed to be a vreki rider. My family wasn’t important enough. I was born without tusks.” He fiddled with his lower teeth for a moment, before putting his hand down again. “About ninety-five per cent of salases have tusks. The other five per cent don’t. I don’t really know why. But not having tusks is considered to be quite ugly, and also a sign of being of a lower class. And then you add to that the fact that I don’t have any red markings on my chest,” – he swept his hand across his chest to emphasise the point – “and we end up with a young salas boy who was considered unworthy to be anything other than a stable hand. I was supposed to spend my life cleaning up vreki shit, rather than riding them.”
“So how did you end up with Ashd, then? I mean, he seems quite happy to be partnered with you. Or am I getting that bit wrong?”
“He’s very happy with it,” Koradan said, a sappy sort of smile crossing his face. “As am I. In a lot of ways, we rescued each other. But it was entirely an accident of circumstance, rather than anything anyone planned…”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Palace of the Stone King – Chalandros, Twenty Five Years Ago
Koradan hummed to himself as he closed the door on the wide stall. One more stall down, only six more to go. Cleaning out vreki stalls was about as boring a life as he could imagine, but the job did have its perks. For one, he was indoors most of the time, which was a blessing when the summer temperatures were climbing ever higher each year. And secondly, he didn’t have a regular clock in and out time. Once the work was done, it was done. If he was feeling lazy, he could take his time and have a few breaks during the day, and if he wanted to be somewhere else, he could hurry through the work and get done early.
The stable was a massive building set off the side of the main palace. It was big enough to fit twenty vreki inside, each of them with a stall three metres wide and six metres long. During the day, they were generally out doing training exercises or being sent on missions to patrol the city, so that was the time Koradan spent shovelling shit out of the stalls and replacing soiled straw with fresh.
He finished the next stall, relieved to see that the vreki who lived there had left it relatively clean, then moved on to the final row. Only five stalls to go. He opened the door, not really paying attention as he replayed a song in his head that he’d heard in a tavern last night… and then suddenly he was backing up, nearly tripping over his own feet, cursing fluently as he found himself face to face with a huge, wide head, green, reptilian eyes and a snarl that displayed teeth that could have taken his arm off.
“Holy shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you were in here,” he apologised frantically to the vreki. “Gods, I’m sorry. The stalls are usually empty during the day. I was just going to clean it… um…” He trailed off, noticing there was something odd about the way the vreki was looking at him. They weren’t generally hostile or aggressive, but at the same time, they had clear rules about who was allowed near them and when, and Koradan most certainly didn’t qualify.
The vreki lowered his head. He gave a low, rumbling moan, which turned into a keening wail at the end. And suddenly, his presence in the stall made sense. “Oh, hey, you’re that vreki who lost his rider, aren’t you?” Koradan said. Once he’d backed out of the stall, the vreki made no further move towards him, though he hadn’t yet closed the door. “That must really suck. I heard about it from my brother. He’s a foot soldier and he works in the palace.” He stood there in the doorway, feeling sorry for the poor creature. Vreki who lost their riders invariably died shortly afterwards. Some people said it was from a broken heart. Others said it was more like having a stroke – a part of their brain simply stopped functioning when it lost a connection that had been there for fifteen or twenty years. The vreki stared at him morosely, then let out a weak moan.
“Yeah, I know, buddy,” Koradan said, daring to take a step closer. “Losing family sucks. My father died a couple of years back. I know it’s not really the same thing, but it hurt like hell to lose him.” He reached out, offering his hand. “I’ve heard you like to have the fronds around your head scratched. Do you want me to do that for you?” Koradan was entirely aware that the vreki could understand him. Vreki learned to understand spoken language from an early age, though the only way a vreki could ‘speak’ to him was telepathically. And being just a stable hand, there was little chance this one would deign to attempt it.
But the vreki leaned his head to the side, offering his neck for a scratch, so Koradan obliged, giving him a good, long rub before finally stepping back. “So, you’re being decommissioned, right? That’s sad. I wish…” He looked the vreki up and down. “Well, I just think maybe someone should take the time to look after you, instead of just sticking you in a stall and giving up. Have you given up? Do you just not want to live anymore?” It was hard to get his head around, the idea of losing someone so important that life was no longer worth living. His mother had loved his father, but after he’d died and she’d spent six months mourning him, she’d picked herself up and carried on, looking after her children, reconnecting with old friends. She’d been sad, but not suicidal. “Well, each to their own, I guess,” he said to the vreki. “I have to go clean the other stalls now. But I hope… Well, I hope you find what you’re looking for. In this life, or in the next.”
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