A Future, Forged Read online

  A Future, Forged

  by Aiki Flinthart

  Published by CAT Press

  Copyright © 2020 Aiki Flinthart

  Cover design by Croco Design

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations) without the prior permission in writing of the copyright holder concerned, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A Cataloguing-in-Publications entry for this title is available from the National Library of Australia.

  Print copies available from major online retailers.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9945928-8-0 (Trade Paperback)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9945928-7-3 (e-book)

  NOTE:

  This book is written with AUSTRALIAN SPELLING/ENGLISH,

  not USA spelling/English.

  Don’t panic.

  Discover other titles by Aiki Flinthart at: www.aikiflinthart.com

  Or

  Blackbirds Sing (Historical fantasy)

  The 80AD series (YA Adventure/Fantasy)

  80AD Book 1: The Jewel of Asgard

  80AD Book 2: The Hammer of Thor

  80AD Book 3: The Tekhen of Anuket

  80AD Book 4: The Sudarshana

  80AD Book 5: The Yu Dragon

  The Ruadhán Sidhe novels (YA Urban fantasy)

  Shadows Wake (Bk1)

  Shadows Bane (Bk2)

  Shadows Fate (Bk 3)

  Healing Heather (Bk4—publication 2020)

  The Kalima Chronicles (YA Adventure/Fantasy)

  IRON—Book One

  FIRE—Book Two

  STEEL—Book Three

  A Future, Forged (Prequel - publication 2020)

  Other Novels

  Sold! (Contemporary Romance/Adventure)

  Short Story Anthologies & Collections

  The Zookeeper’s Tales of Interstellar Oddities

  Return

  Like a Woman

  Elemental

  Non-Fiction – Author writing resources

  Fight Like A Girl – Writing Fight Scenes for Female (and male) Characters

  Connect with her on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/aikiflinthartauthor

  Twitter: @aikiflinthart

  Instagram: Aikiflinthart

  CONTENTS

  Maps

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Other books by Aiki Flinthart

  Appendix – Story Facts & Background, plus list of people, places and words

  Maps

  NOTE:

  This book is written with AUSTRALIAN SPELLING/ENGLISH,

  not USA spelling/English.

  Don’t panic.

  A Future, Forged

  Only the past can free the future

  Aiki Flinthart

  2019

  This is a prequel to IRON, first in the Kalima Chronicles trilogy.

  A Future, Forged, is set 200 years before IRON.

  CHAPTER ONE

  TEYA

  Teya looked back twice as she ran. They were still coming. Gouri! Why wouldn’t they leave her alone? She scowled and dodged south.

  She ducked sideways to avoid a cart, and jagged around the corner of a bakery before the city guardsmen spotted her change of direction. A stack of old riceflour sacks offered refuge. She collapsed behind them, against the warm sulcrete-and-stone wall, panting.

  Overhead, slivers of pale green sky showed between the neatly-tiled rooflines. The burnt-orange sunlight created purple patches of shadow dark enough to hide a thief good at being invisible.

  Perrin slid in beside her, his thin body shaking but an indomitable grin on his dirt-smudged face. His shortened, maimed left leg didn’t slow him much anymore. He tucked a hand into hers and she squeezed it. His quick breaths puffed little clouds into the sharp, late-autumn air.

  Heavy footsteps clattered close to their hiding place. Two city junren-guards. They peered into the alley. Teya crouched lower and dragged Perrin’s tousled blond head out of sight. She stared at the junren, through a gap in the sacks. Matching expressions of intent listening passed over their faces. They retreated into the broader street and ran off.

  The sound of their boots on the cobbles faded and Perrin slumped against the wall with a thick-blown sigh. He lifted his bare left foot and massaged the swollen ankle.

  ‘Twisted the stupid thing. Again.’ Tears glistened but he pawed them away and grinned at Teya. ‘Thought those junren were gonna catch us! What’d you get?’

  Teya hefted a silver and turquoise brooch, turning it so the metal and green-blue stones gleamed in the afternoon light. Pickings in the rich northern areas of Asalam city were better, but the city guards were more alert, too. She’d been careless. It wouldn’t happen again. Perrin needed her.

  ‘I did it, didn’t I? Was I good?’ Perrin’s gaze was fixed on her, eager. ‘I watched you real close and I fell over when you winked at me, like we planned. But you might have to wink bigger next time. It was kinda hard to see.’

  ‘I will, I promise. You’re a pretty good little actor.’ She managed a smile. ‘And these rich people like to feel so goody-goody when they stop to help a poor little crippled boy who’s hurt his leg.’ She snorted. ‘Like they care. They’ve forgotten you two seconds later.’

  Perrin giggled. ‘Maybe ‘cause you’ve stolen their purse and they’re a bit cranky.’

  She shrugged. ‘Serves them right. Gouri jun-lovers all of them.’ She quashed a familiar surge of anger and ruffled her brother’s wild blond hair. ‘They’ve got more’n they need, anyway.’

  ‘How much will we get?’ he whispered.

  ‘Not sure. We’ll have to go to Bretta’s pawn shop, through the Migong slums, to sell it. She gives the best prices. But it’s risky so late in the afternoon. Gangs’ll be out patrolling.’

  Perrin’s smile widened. ‘Worth it, though. We can eat for a week off that. You’re the best.’ He beamed and rested his head on her shoulder, wrapping his thin arms as far around her as they would go. Then his excitement vanished and he leaned back, his eyes dark. ‘But the lady
you stole it off. What if she has children to feed, too? Will she need it?’

  Teya took in her six-year-old brother’s distress and knew a twinge of guilt. What would their mother say if she knew Teya used her gift for thievery and dragged Perrin into it as well? Teya fingered her mother’s little gold locket that hung on a strip of leather beneath her tunic. Inside was a delicate painting of Teya aged nine—six years before.

  She clenched her teeth against the raw taste of bitterness. Nothing. Her mother would say nothing, for her chance to care about her children had been ripped away five years ago. She would understand that Teya did what it took to survive and protect Perrin.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘That woman was rich enough to feed fifty kids. They all are on this side of town. Sucking up to the juns. Especially now the Jun First is coming to town.’

  ‘I s’pose.’ He sighed. ‘It would be nice to have a mother. Tell me again about her?’

  ‘Later,’ Teya said, shoving aside a familiar pang of longing and regret. ‘We need to get home. Besides…’ she hugged him to her side ‘…we don’t need anyone else. We can trust each other. Look out for each other. Always.’

  He nodded, sparkling with determination.

  ‘Good,’ she said. No-one else would help them, that was for sure. She didn’t say that out loud, though. Perrin still had faith in people. How, after growing up in the Migong slums, she had no idea. But she couldn’t bear to disillusion him. He’d learn.

  She rose, reversed her Trades-House-brown jacket to display the Merchant-green side and twitched the hood up, hiding her distinctive auburn hair. She brushed a lock aside. The fine stuff wasn’t quite long enough to tie into a man’s mawei—and at fifteen she didn’t look old enough to wear one.

  But she was not wearing a woman’s veil, so she was left pretending to be a boy until she couldn’t hide any longer. If that meant forever, then so be it. Being a woman in the jundom of Mamlakah was nothing special, anyway. Good for nothing but having children.

  The brooch she stuffed into a deep pocket, where it nestled with a silk purse holding measly two yinbi coins, and a fine gold necklace tugged from around the neck of a skinny old noblewoman with more money than sense.

  Not a great haul, but one that would feed Perrin for a few days. Perhaps even get him a pair of shoes to fit his twisted foot.

  She peered around the riceflour sacks and relaxed. No junren-guards.

  The only people in sight were a group of workers clearing out a blockage in Asalam city’s hotsprings water conduits. A man and two teenage boys in Trades House brown were gathered beside an open access hole. The boys worked a hand-pump of some sort, and fed a pipe and a length of rope into the depths. Steam and water splashed from hole. A smaller boy, about Perrin’s age, poked his wet head out. He removed a mask and the breathing pipe and said something to the man. Then he collected a hammer and chisel, put the mask and pipe over his face, and disappeared.

  Teya shuddered. What a horrible job. Every day held the possibility of getting trapped in flooded pipes. Drowning.

  Perrin’s hand snuck into hers again. She kissed his forehead. Maybe thieving wasn’t the worst thing he could be doing, after all.

  She peeked around the corner again. Time to go. The sky was darkening to teal as the afternoon wore on. Clouds gathered in the west, obscuring the dull orange autumn-sun where it balanced on the roofs across the road. With night would come a curfew and they had a long walk to get to their hidey-hole shelter in the Migongs.

  ‘C’mon,’ she said. ‘If we’re quick we can get to Bretta’s and home before first curfew bells.’ Teya sauntered into the street and headed south, toward the river. Perrin half-skipped alongside, chattering even as Teya watched for more junren.

  The houses deteriorated as they left the better parts of town, changing from stately sulcrete and bloodsandstone, glass-windowed mansions to rough-cut stone and bamboo slums with shuttered holes for windows and broken tiles or bamboo ply for roofs.

  Bath houses changed from huge, stone constructions, surrounded by restaurants and shops, to timber shanties that leaked steam and attracted thieves and unveiled jiaoji-whores plying their trades.

  Teya grimaced. How she longed for a good, hot bath. But she couldn’t afford the better ones—where she could bathe in privacy—and the cheaper ones were notorious for forcibly taking young girls and lads into the whorehouses that lined the riverbank. Or for vanishing them altogether.

  There had been a lot of that, lately. They never returned.

  A winding road opened into a misshapen square where a half-dozen merchants, wearing dirtied-green, manned stalls holding inferior wares. A far cry from the silk-edged, gilded trinkets available in the markets close to the Jun First’s huge home in the city centre.

  Did the Jun First, Jenna Zah-Hill know that the people of Asalam called her extravagant, overdecorated country house “Chinshi”— “stupid thing”?

  Teya sniffed at the thought. The Jun First was just a few years older than she was and had only visited Asalam twice that Teya could remember. Stayed safe and pampered in the capital, Madina. The jun probably didn’t even know where Asalam was on a map.

  Juns were all self-interested shazis.

  She strode through the square, checking to make sure Perrin was still close.

  Four women, all wearing much-patched robes of faded-floral bamboo-cloth, huddled around the steaming well, heads together. They turned as Teya and Perrin approached. Their eyes might be obscured by the traditional half-veil, but their scrutiny made Teya’s shoulders twitch. She faded herself and Perrin from their view. The women fell to whispering.

  As she passed a fruit stall, Teya filched two jilla fruit and hid herself from the stall-holder’s notice. She ate one fruit in five large bites, and slurped at the tart scarlet juice, licking her fingers to catch each drop. The other fruit went to Perrin and he devoured it with messy speed, falling behind as he concentrated.

  She rounded a corner and ploughed into a much larger body. A man. She stumbled and clutched at his belt. Habit brought her dagger hand up. Leather parted beneath the sharp bronze blade.

  ‘I do apologise, young man,’ a cultured voice said above her. An elegant, brown hand came to rest on Teya’s shoulder. He smelled cleanly of soap and faintly of mel-oil.

  Teya whipped her arms behind her and put on an innocent look. Too late to hide. ‘Never mind, shenshi. My fault. Wasn’t watching.’ She managed a jerky half-bow and retreated, blending her image with the wall. He’d forget her in a moment. She peeked sideways, pleased that Perrin had the sense to stay hidden.

  The man dropped his hand to his hip in a habitual gesture. His night-black eyes widened. He glanced down. Then he tilted his head and stared straight at her.

  Teya gaped. How could he see her?

  CHAPTER TWO

  TEYA

  ‘Shenshi Dallan?’ A black-clad weishi-bodyguard stepped forward. ‘What is it?’ Two more joined him, one a woman.

  Teya swallowed, her heart thudding.

  The dark-haired man gestured them away. ‘I’ll deal with him.’

  The weishi exchanged confused looks. ‘Who—?’

  Dallan cut them off with a wave, focussed on Teya.

  She clung tight to the objects in her hands and tensed. She’d backed herself against the wall, instead of into the alley. Nowhere to run. Jiche! Stupid mistake! Why could he see her? She couldn’t even warn Perrin lest it give his position away.

  But the man called Dallan surprised her. Rather than crying thief or setting his weishi on her, his sharp features softened into wryness. He flicked his cobalt-and-green tartan cloak over one shoulder and held out a palm.

  ‘Return it and we’ll say nothing of this, boy.’ His dark eyes held a hint of hardness at odds with the gentle smile. His three weishi laid hands on their ceramic swords, their gazes passing, unseeing, over her position.

  She produced the belt, her cheeks and stomach burning. In the last five years she’d been providing for Per
rin, she’d never once been caught. No one saw her if she didn’t want them to. Would he really do nothing, or would he turn her over to the junren now he had his things? That would be typical.

  Dallan held the sliced-through strip of leather and fingered the ornate dagger-sheath. He sent Teya an ironic look.

  With a sigh, she pulled the dagger from its place in the small of her spine. The blade glinted silvery in the orange sunlight.

  ‘Steel!’ she whispered. Light danced across the steel blade and played weakly in the milk-white stone set into the pommel. A knife like this was worth more than…well more than she could even imagine in coin.

  ‘Yes,’ Dallan replied. ‘Earth steel, in fact. Over six hundred years old. Been in my family for twenty generations.’ He plucked the blade from Teya and weighed it in his palm. ‘My ancestor brought it with him to Kalima in the first colony ship, five hundred years ago.’

  Teya sucked a quick breath. ‘You’re a first-family?’ There had been five hundred families on that original ship. Twenty-one of them were the funding-families that later became the ruling juns. She let a spike of anger pass.

  ‘Indeed,’ Dallan said, inclining his head. His dark hair, held by a silver band into a fashionably-long mawei, slipped over his shoulder and lay against the grey silk of his jacket. Everything about him screamed wealth, from the sturdy leather of his boots to the spice-otter fur trimming his cloak.

  ‘You’re not a jun?’ she asked, feeling for the hilt of her bronze blade. First-families weren’t so bad. Most were ordinary folk these days. The only difference was that they kept a family name instead of a kin-father name to show their parentage. But juns… she barely resisted the urge to spit at his feet.

  His brows lifted. ‘No. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Nevermind.’ Teya checked her surrounds. Could she run? Would he chase her down now he had his dagger back?