The Faarian Chronicles: Exile (7 page)

Chapter 8: Treated Like Royalty

The heat hit me like a wall at the door and I hurried away
from the gleaming plane, thinking it was heat off the engines. It didn’t get
any cooler farther away though, and I clapped my hands over my ears as the
engines screamed, creating a sandstorm of hot grit for us to trudge through. My
earplugs were still in my pocket and my sunglasses still in my bag. I wished
I’d thought to get them out before leaving the plane. The sand and noise
settled and I got my first sense of this place: dry and dusty and unearthly
quiet.

We were on the outside of a huge, chain-link fence that made
a dome at the top, like the
Jurassic Park
movie with the pterodactyls. I
hadn’t noticed it until we were up close, having been looking through it at the
building. It was suspended about a foot above the base of the trench all the
way around the building with a gate in front of us over a drawbridge. Sensei
made a big deal of making sure the gate was closed before we entered the palace
through a side door… the Kindred, I guessed they called it. I was relieved not
to have to make my entrance through that huge, ornate archway.

We walked down a stone hallway and into an enormous
gathering hall with white marble floors and a deep, lapis blue domed ceiling
streaked with silver. Long tables ran in rows down the length of the cavernous
room, but it was entirely deserted.

We walked down one side of the room toward the clamor of
kitchen sounds. I set my bags next to the door as we walked in to find Ethem
stirring several tall soup pots on a giant stove and giving directions to half
a dozen men and women who were all busy checking ovens, chopping, stirring,
mashing, and washing in a whirl of activity.

“Oh, good. There you two are. I’d started to wonder if you
went on the plane to pick up the General,” Ethem said when he saw us. He took a
taste from one of the pots, made a face and reached for a spice jar with one
hand and the phone on his belt with the other. He pressed one button and held
it to his ear.

“Otrere, would you come down and give our new arrival a
quick tour of the residences before dinner?” He paused to hear the response.
“Yes, now,” he said, irritated, “it’s not like you and your sister set the
tables while I was gone, like I asked, did you?” Another pause, “Good,” he
sounded mollified, “she’s here waiting for you.” He snapped his phone shut and
turned to me and Sensei, shaking his head.

“You know how it is. You ask people to do something while
you’re gone and what do you get? A houseful of chores left undone and dinner to
finish.”

I could see that he was annoyed and felt partly responsible.
“Well, do you want some help?” I offered. “I can set the table if you’ll show
me where things are.” I immediately regretted saying anything. They probably
did it completely differently here.

He looked at me curiously. “That’s nice of you, Sunny,” he
said after a pause. “Why don’t you have your tour first and see where your room
is, then we’ll see if there’s anything left to do.”

So in other words, thanks but no thanks.

A few minutes passed while we waited and I observed the
cooks bustling along, preparing vast amounts of food. The kitchen table was
already covered with a tower of bread loaves, desserts cooling on racks, and
dozens of bowls of several kinds of salads. How many people lived here, anyway?
They weren’t having a dinner party or something, were they?

It was amazing to see everyone working in the kitchen in
unison, quickly and efficiently, as if they did this together every day like a
professional restaurant kitchen on TV. Not that Dad never helped in the kitchen
at home, but mostly Judith kicked him out if he tried. If Dad had to cook,
which Judith made sure almost never happened, he popped in a frozen pizza or
ordered out.

Like Ethem, the other male cooks had geometric patterns
across their eyes and cheeks in a variety of shades, some subtle and spotted,
some bold and graphic, with coordinating teeth colors. Despite Sensei’s
explanation about traditional markings, I still couldn’t imagine wanting a
tattoo covering half my face.

They were all thin, so thin I had a hard time believing they
spent their days preparing food. Maybe they weren’t any good at it, I mused.
They mostly wore boring polo shirts and khakis, with the exception of a tall,
skinny young man wearing silver pants that must have belonged to Mick Jagger in
the 80’s.

 "Okay, so where is she?” I turned and saw two
girls about my age and a lot bigger than me take the corner into the kitchen at
full speed, almost knocking over the cook  removing a casserole from the
oven. He did a graceful spin to avoid them and got the hot dish onto a trivet
without incident.

“Lyta! Otrere! Watch what you’re doing!” Ethem pronounced
their names Lee-Ta and Oh-Trare.

“Sorry Ethem!” they chorused, grinning devilishly and
skidded to a stop in front of me, obviously anything but sorry.

“One of you can give Sunny a tour. The other can help set
the tables.” Neither girl gave any indication that she had heard Ethem’s
orders, focusing their attention on me instead.

“Hey,” one said. I had no idea which was which, and probably
wouldn’t still if they were introduced. They were twins.

“Hey,” I replied. I wasn’t used to girls being bigger than
me, both in height and muscle. Despite their grins, there was something rough
and intimidating about them. And they were in a hurry.

“I’m Lyta. This is Otrere. You’re Veridian. Let’s go.” They
spun back to the door and grabbed my bags as I looked at Sensei.

“Help,” I mouthed.

“Go on, you’ll be fine,” she said, giving me a shove toward
the door and the girls.

I had to run to keep up as they dashed through the house,
turning this way and that, up stairs and down hallways until I felt as if we
were running through a maze. They pointed right or left as we passed and yelled
out, “INFIRMARY!”, “BATHROOM!”, “ADMINISTRATION!”, “COMMISSARY!”, “FISH
TANKS!”, “SUPPLY ROOM!”, a never-ending string of individual people’s rooms,
and finally, “GENERAL’S QUARTERS!”

By the end, I was too busy dodging people who stuck their
heads out of doorways at the racket they were making to get more than a glance
at any of the rooms they pointed out. They threw my bags through the doorway of
a small bedroom, off of an even smaller living room, pointed out the bathroom,
and took off again, leaving me there out of breath and shell-shocked.

“What? Stop! Come back!” I yelled after them. I had no idea
where I was or how to get back.

“Gotta go, Princess!” one of them yelled back.

“Some of us have work to do!” the other yelled and their
laughter echoed down the halls as they ran back to whatever hole they’d crawled
out of. Some tour guides. I didn’t know a lot here, but I knew being the
General’s daughter didn’t make me royalty. For the first time I wondered if
being my mother’s daughter would make me the object of envy or ridicule. Great.
One more way for my mother to ruin my life.

Not sure what to do now, I checked my iPhone and other
belongings for damage and looked around the Spartan little room. It was like a
cheap motel room, but with no phone to call the front desk. This had to be a
mistake -- a joke. My mother was in charge here, wasn’t she? There was no way
this plain little apartment was where she lived.

The tiny room had an old chest of drawers next to a window
that looked out on the desert, a twin bed that looked old and lumpy, a short
metal filing cabinet as a bedside table, and a chipped lamp. Besides the
handmade quilt on the bed, there were no decorations. Boy, someone had really
made an effort, I thought sarcastically.

Be tough,
I repeated
Sensei’s words to myself. This was how things were. Make the best of it. But I
sure knew which girls I didn’t need to expend any effort being nice to.

And now ‘making the best of it’ meant going down to dinner
and meeting a whole bunch of strangers, who may or may not be like those girls
– and I had no idea how to get back to the main hall from here.

I went into the little bathroom and glanced in the mirror.
Sure enough, wheat fields in August. I needed to calm down. It usually took
quite a bit to get my eyes to change all the way, but today had been plain
weird. Nerve racking. And apparently being dumped here after a wild goose chase
was the last straw.

Feeling overheated, I undid the Velcro on my Nike sandals
and sighed at the coolness of the tile on my bare feet. I guess they didn’t
believe in air conditioning.

I wanted to splash my face, and a cool drink would be nice,
but how did you turn this thing on? I looked all around the otherwise standard
pedestal sink, but there was no control knob on the faucet, only a little black
panel stuck to the wall below the mirror. I tried waving my hand in front of
it, thinking it was the sensors like at the mall. Then I tried poking it like a
button. Nothing. My foot hit something raised on the tile and I looked down to
see a button on the floor. Stepping on it didn’t do anything either, even while
waving and poking. I probably looked like I was doing some sort of rain dance
in front of the sink.

I could see my eyes flash and the hated yellow intensify as
I slapped my whole hand against the panel and stomped on the floor before
giving up and kicking the porcelain base of the sink. Ow, ow, OW! I hopped
around in a circle and dropped to the floor to hold my stubbed toe, swearing.
You’d think after all these years in martial arts I’d remember to flex my foot!
God, how ridiculous! I started laughing ruefully and fell back on the cool
tile, cause sometimes there’s nothing else you can do.

After laying there a while, I got up and went back to the
bedroom to get my iPhone and started my relaxation playlist. I noticed a stack
of clothes on the worn quilt with a note balanced on top. A pair of tall boots
sat on the floor.

The short note was written in a strong, angular hand.
Veridian, thought you might need some work gear.
Asked your father for sizes and guessed from there. Hope they fit. If not, take
them to the commissary and trade.
Next to my mother’s distinctive
signature was a scrawl squeezed in at the bottom - definitely an after-thought:
Welcome Home.

So, this
was
the place. I put down the note and
picked up one of the ugliest boots I’d ever seen in my life, knee high with a
thick, waffle sole and non-realistic navy pleather uppers. Geez! They didn’t even
resemble real leather. And why were they metallic? The material had an odd
rainbow shine reminiscent of an oil slick. Yuk!

I tossed it back on the floor and inspected the “work”
clothes. Long pants and long-sleeved shirts made of some breathable synthetic
fabric in light gray and beige. Andi would never be caught dead in this fabric.

Next was a glass bottle of sun block. Hadn’t they ever heard
of plastic? Wait, yes, cause that’s what the boots were made of! Maybe I’d just
keep wearing my Nikes.

A cursory tour of the rest of the apartment found a tiny
living room with a large fish tank built into the outer wall. Huh. That seemed
decadent. I could see right through the tank, a wavy view of the desert outside
as a backdrop for a school of flat silver fish with sunset bellies.

There was a couch, table, and a couple of chairs in the
sparsely furnished room. No knickknacks or pictures to tell me anything about
the person who lived here. No TV. An even tinier kitchenette looked like it was
never used.

The door to my mother’s room was open and I thought about
not snooping, but decided that if she hadn’t wanted me to look, she should have
shut the door. But her room was like the rest of the apartment: sparse, cold,
impersonal; the single bed made with military precision.

A quick search through the drawers found half of them empty.
The others held more dull work clothes and basic toiletries, neatly arranged.
Did anyone actually live here? I had to wonder. Didn’t she ever dress up or go
out? Or was she just a joyless workaholic?

I went out into the hallway, hungry and tired of staring at
the beige walls of my new bedroom. Twenty minutes and three wrong turns later,
I felt the anger and helplessness bubble up inside me for the millionth time
today. I was lost.

“A little help?” I yelled. Still no response. “Can anybody
hear me?” I yelled at the top of my lungs. Apparently everyone had gone to
dinner and I was too far away to be heard.

Okay Sunny, think this through. It’s a house, not a maze.
Those two braying donkeys got you lost on purpose. You saw the place from the
air. It was square, with a square tower on each corner. It can’t be that hard.
You can figure this out. Calm down. Deep breaths.

I went through the stairs we’d taken in my head, up and up
and down and up and down again. So I must be on the what, second floor? Okay,
so I needed to find some stairs, go down two flights and take the long straight
corridors until I find the main hall. Okay.

I actually felt rather pleased at my deductive skills; that
is until I ended up at the same railing overlooking the same tiny courtyard
full of the same potted plants and trees - for the third time. No stairs,
nothing that looked like a door to a main corridor, only short, nearly
identical hallways filled with nearly identical doors.

The railing in front of me was wide and covered in more
potted herbs, sunning themselves under the skylight, which seemed like a good
idea. I sat with my back to the railing, trying to think and getting nowhere.

Agh! Why did I follow those girls, anyway? I smacked my head
back against the rail, hard, and raised my face to the sun, jerking forward
again when I heard a giant crash below me.

I had to stand to see that a huge turquoise pot holding a
little orange tree directly below me had broken in half, spilling dirt
everywhere, and was now surrounded by pottery shards from another, smaller pot.
That’s when I noticed the bare spot on the rail in front of me.