I haven’t been active on here in a while, but I thought that now that my latest short story is in the “ready for edit” stage, why not show it off here? Below is a short excerpt of the fifth story of Tales From Karatera – Makina! This thing hasn’t been through the editing rounds yet, so some of what’s within may be subject to change. I hope you enjoy it regardless!
Content Warnings: Slavery
Makina
By Thomas Mansfield
Rashan sat calmly in his cushioned seat as his slave read aloud his demands. Ali Hadid-em-Aktharkaan sat across the table from him, looking more and more incredulous with every word. Rashan held his gaze, keeping his fingers pursed and his face free from emotion. He’d chosen a grey silk robe for this occasion, tied with a grey velvet sash and topped by a short grey vest. Only the mantle that denoted his rank within the Grey Cabal held colour, that being the dark ochre yellow of a greater adept.
Silence hung in the chamber once the steward had finished. Rashan gave a glance at the slave as he rolled up his scroll, then turned back to Aktharkaan. The aging lord of Musafrah had a narrow face and a thin moustache, wrapped up in what could’ve been anywhere from a dozen to a hundred layers of fine red silk. He stared at Rashan in utter disbelief, peering at him from behind a pair of silver-rimmed eyeglasses.
“Are you mad, khorgul?” he demanded.
Rashan’s lip curled, brushing against one of his tusks. Only a quarter of him was of the indigo-skinned savages of the eastern deserts – the rest of him was human. He doubted the Hadid would appreciate the distinction, of course, so he merely replied, “I am not, hadi.”
“This is not mockery? These demands are genuine?”
“Do you take issue with my masters’ requests?”
“Take issue?” Hadid Aktharkaan spluttered furiously. “I’ve never heard such ludicrous demands in all my seventy years! Six thousand pounds of clay? Ifenswalk has seceded from Providence, the Black River’s been taken over by dragonkin … the Red Sands is soon to be invaded from the north and the south, and you’re asking me for six thousand pounds of clay?”
“The Grey Cabal is asking for six thousand pounds of clay,” Rashan corrected him with a smirk.
“Your cabal is asking me to turn sawdust into water!” Aktharkaan snapped. He pushed himself up with his cane, glaring daggers at Rashan. “How in the hells do you expect me to get that much clay from the desert? And within a month’s time no less!”
“From the river, I should think,” Rashan remarked lightly. Musafrah sat within in the Sadiy Valley, beside a dead river that once flowed from the Southern Laceration. “I’m given to understand that there are still silt deposits up there.”
“Not six thousand pounds worth!” Aktharkaan hobbled around to the other side of the room, his cane hitting the stone paves heavily with each step. Rashan watched him pace about, entertained by the old man’s agitation. “The clay is bad enough, but then there are your other ‘requests’. Mercenaries, sculptors, storehouses, enough slaves to fill a village … a house and an estate, all to yourself …”
“Don’t forget the granite block,” Rashan added pleasantly.
“Don’t get me started on your bloody granite block!” Aktharkaan screeched, pointing an accusatory finger at him. “A solid block, ten feet high, delivered within the week … the transportation cost alone is ruinous!”
Rashan would have thought that the granite would be the easiest thing for Aktharkaan to acquire, given that he owned a red granite quarry barely three miles out of Musafrah. He suspected that this indignation was rooted more in a lack of compensation rather than the effort required. With a sigh, he told Aktharkaan, “I understand that these requests may seem unusual, hadi, but we need these materials to fight the dragonkin.”
“Oh? And what will your clay do to the Bluebanes, hm? Persuade them to take up pottery?” Aktharkaan asked scornfully. “It’s nonsense, all of it. Why on earth should I entertain any of this?”
Rashan had anticipated that very question. Leaning forward, he explained patiently, “Hadi, you enlisted the Redblood Mercenary Company – and the Grey Cabal by extension – to defend your lands and your people. It was agreed by you at the time that you would provide whatever the company needed in times of crisis to provide you with that very defence.” He let that reminder hang in the air for a moment. “This is a time of crisis. You said as much only a minute ago. What we’re planning to do with these materials is of no concern to you. All that matters is that they will protect Musafrah from whatever threats may come in the next few months.” He smirked. “Of course, if you are displeased with our methods, then you are more than welcome to hire another mercenary company for your protection.”
Rashan leant back in his chair, lacing his fingers across his stomach as he waited. The lord of Musafrah glared daggers at him as the silence stretched on, no doubt knowing as well as Rashan did that there were no other mercenary companies in the Red Sands. And since Aktharkaan’s army, town militia and personal guards were all, in fact, those such mercenaries, losing the Redbloods meant leaving his town defenceless.
“… Devils take you,” Hadid Aktharkaan muttered darkly. “Fine. You’ll have your clay. And your bloody granite block.”
The manor that Hadid Aktharkaan gave to Rashan had a chapel to the First Eye attached to it, a remnant from the days when Providence’s control on the Red Sands had been a stranglehold rather than a limp hand on the shoulder. It was a spacious, octagonal building with a wide door and narrow windows. As far as Rashan was concerned, it was perfect.
The first step was removing the furniture still in the chapel – the pews, the cylindrical altar, and so forth. He left the candelabras, reasoning that he’d need some nonmagical light for his studies, nor did he destroy the iconography carved around the room. Rashan knew too many stories of reckless mages who incurred the wrath of the gods. Their annoyance was much easier to weather.
He had his slaves move the furnishings into the stables by the side of the manor. They had come with the manor, a host of quiet, nervous servants with square faces and squat frames, the telltale signs of mountainfolk heritage. Most of them would have born into slavery, Rashan assumed, as had their mothers and fathers, simply because they weren’t purely human. Anyone with inhuman blood was prey for slavers, even those with only faint traces like Rashan. In another life, he might’ve ended up like these wretches.
Moving his equipment into his new laboratory was the most difficult part of the process. The desks were easy enough, but he had to keep careful watch on his slaves as they assembled the glassware into their proper configurations. Then came the regents he needed for his work – lead and quicksilver, powdered rubies, sandworm hairs and earth elemata cores, all contained in small lockboxes and tiny chests. Most of the regents were either absurdly delicate or absurdly rare, so he took care of transporting those himself.
The laboratory was halfway finished when Rashan heard a cough from behind him. He turned to see one of the slaves that had came with the manor, an adolescent girl with dirty black hair, bright brown eyes and a wry, lean frame. She wore a pale linen tunic and an iron collar, as did the other slaves, yet her face held bright curious eyes and a cheerful smile. It was so out of place from the dour misery of the other slaves that for a moment, Rashan thought she was some lost girl.
“There’s someone at the door, master,” she announced, with a small bow. “Calls himself Captain Hasik.”
Captain Hasik was an old acquaintance to Rashan, having worked with him during the short-lived Guildmaster’s Rebellion in Ifenswalk. He was a sallow, yet broad man, with wild hair, dark eyes and a grey beard that never seemed to be trimmed properly. In rank, Hasik was supposed to be Rashan’s equal, since the Grey Cabal was just a different branch of the Redbloods, but neither he nor Rashan entertained that pretence. Masuma led him into the room, then bowed and took her leave as Hasik asserted himself, stumbling past the slaves and the furniture, scratching himself under his brigandine vest. His black and red tabard seemed to have more stains than the last time Rashan had seen him, and he couldn’t help but notice that he was missing the black dagger earring that denoted members of the Redblood Mercenary Company. He must have lost it again.
“Captain Hasik,” Rashan greeted him politely. “It is good to see you well.”
“Is this what feeling well is like?” Hasik grumbled, trying to wipe something off the sleeves of his vest. He glanced around at the burgeoning workspace, chuckling. “Desecrating holy places now, are we?”
Rashan smirked, feeling his lip brush against one of his tusks. “The Red Sands hasn’t followed the First Eye in years. I’m simply taking advantage of an unused space.”
“As you will,” Hasik said with a shrug. A bitter, earthy smell clung to him, mixed with the sour scent of wine. “I came to tell you that your friends in grey are all set up.”
“You needn’t have come in person. A messenger would’ve sufficed.”
“Aye … but then I wouldn’t be able to tell you about the other thing.”
That was true enough. Rashan looked around the room, seeing nothing else that demanded his direct supervision, then said, “Well, let’s take a walk then, so we may discuss it privately.”
He dismissed his slaves from the workshop, then left to take Hasik to his courtyard. The building had been built in both the styles of the almuhariin people of the Red Sands, with tipped archways and geometric mosaics, and those of the eastern Coastlands, with marble columns and open-air rooms. One of those rooms included a small courtyard in the centre of the estate, with a garden of yellowing grass that gathered around an ailing black acacia tree, looming over a shallow grey pond.
“Cheerful,” Hasik remarked when he saw it. “Did Hadid Aktharkaan mention that your garden was half-dead?”
Rashan shrugged, leading the captain through the shaded walkway that enclosed the garden. “I chose this place for its solitude, not its aesthetics. You said they’ve all settled into their workshops?”
Hasik burped. “Aye. Turns out the storehouses the Aktharkaans gave them were supposed to belong to the farmers’ guild. The guildmaster complained a bit, ‘till we told him who was taking over.” Hasik chuckled. “Your friends in grey want each workshop guarded night and day, but they barely need it. Whole town is petrified of the Grey Cabal. I’ve heard people say you’ll drop stone dead if you look at a Grey Sage in the eyes.”
“Do they?” Rashan remarked, amused.
“Aye, heard it the other night at the pipe den.” Hasik gave him a side glance. “It’s nonsense, right? I mean, I’ve looked at you plenty of times, and I’m still breathing.”
“Of course. Why would I kill you?” Rashan stroked his chin. “I am familiar with the spell you’re speaking of. Murderer’s glare, it’s called. Notoriously inefficient. It requires you to hold unbroken eye contact for five to six seconds, which, as you may imagine, is rather difficult to achieve in pitched combat. And its high magic, too – the effort required to cast it may leave me blind, or worse. I’d much sooner use unerring arrow.”
“I … what kind of arrow?”
Rashan’s smirk grew a bit wider as they passed by the garden’s corner. “Unerring arrow, by the ancient spiritbinder Djedi. It conjures a dart of pure spiritual force and looses it at a target of your choosing, as an archer would do with bow and arrow. The dart never misses, never falters, winding around any obstacle in its way. So long as you can see your foe, it will always strike true. Not quite as dramatic as killing a man with a look, but far less taxing.”
“That so?” Hasik murmured, looking like he’d just smelt something foul that hadn’t come from the pond.
“It is,” Rashan said with a chuckle. “But let’s get back to the topic at hand. The other laboratory is complete, you said. What of the mason I asked you to get?”
“… Aye, we found one,” Hasik muttered, scratching his beard. “Ahir ibn … something or other, I can’t recall. The greatest mason for a hundred miles, he said he was. Poor bastard nearly shat himself when I told him that he’d been chosen by a Grey Sage.”
Rashan laughed. “Well, let’s hope he keeps hold of his bowels long enough for my block to arrive.”
“Aye … and to be clear, if your friends ask me about what you’re doing up here …”
“Then you tell them you haven’t the first clue,” Rashan finished for him. His masters in the cabal had instructed him only to work with the clay. As far as they and his subordinates were concerned, there was no granite block. Remembering, he asked, “What of the clay? Has it arrived yet?”
“No. But I’ve been told that it should be arriving in the next week or two.” Hasik gave him an expectant look. “Are you, ah … going to tell me what it’s for?”
“It’s necessary for our defence against the Bluebanes.”
“You keep saying that. But you never say how.” Hasik stopped at the other end of the garden, his silhouette framed by the stooping branches of the acacia. “I’m no wizard, Rashan, I know I’ve no right to question you, but … we’re relying on your cabal to protect us from the dragonkin, and we’ve got no idea what any of you are doing. I mean, all this about sculptors and stonemasons …” Hasik looked down at Rashan uneasily. “What’s it all for?”
Rashan laughed. “It’s for our victory, captain. It’s for the protection of our cities and the foundation of a kingdom that’ll stand for a thousand years … so long as the dragonkin do not know what they are walking into.” He patted the captain on the arm, telling him, “You will have to be patient a while longer, my old friend. Now, I insist you stay for supper. I’ve just gotten my hands on some shai-scorpion eggs …”
Sprouting Nonsense 
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