"Well, look, how about we just do a wind walk." Goan proposed with a very slight smile on his face. He brushed back his bone white hair and finished his cup of coffee as he looked at his companions for their answers.
Nemu and Kuuderika traded a dubious look. It was, per usual, Nemu who spoke up with her arms crossed and a roll of her eyes. "Listen, you can't just say something strange out of the blue like that, and then look blankly at us like we're supposed to know just what you mean. What the hell is a 'Wind Walk' and how does it work?"
Goan looked sheepish, "Oh, yeah. It's something the locals out there do when they're restless. They pick a starting point, and just walk in whatever direction the wind blows, and when it changes direction, so do they. It's kind of a nice tradition if you ask me."
Kuuderika joined Nemu in crossing her slender arms. "You're getting way too into the local culture, I mean the coffee is nice and all… OK better than nice, some mornings I'd murder for a cup. But still! That isn't one of our ways."
Goan rarely glared at his friends, but he did now. "Maybe not, but it should be. I think it's a good idea, and for that matter, neither of you have 'any' ideas. 'Any' idea, beats 'no' idea. So either come up with a better one or I say we head to the center of town and start walking. Just because it's not something from back home, that doesn't mean we shouldn't embrace it. Our very god came from some other world, and that isn't a problem, another continent's traditions should be even easier to embrace."
Nemu and Kuuderika had the good grace to look a little shamefaced. "Fine, fine. You're right, it isn't really right to look down on their traditions for not being ours. I'm just proud of our home, there's nothing wrong with that." Nemu said and pursed her lips, she formed a mild pout as she looked away from him.
"No there's not, but you didn't come all the way across the ocean just to do things the way we did them back home." Goan said somewhat snarkily and stared at the eye he could still see. "We could have just stayed back home in Carne if you wanted to do that."
Kuuderika's normally quiet, reserved face turned mischievous and her blue eyes sparkled when she said, "He's got you there, Nem-Nem." She winked when Nemu's head spun to the girl sitting beside her idly spinning her staff with its tip on the floor.
Nemu began shaking her head with such vigor that her hair cast back and forth behind her, the auburn shade whipped about like a feather in the wind. "Nem-Nem? I'm cancelling that nickname… right now. No, no way, no how, not happening.. Nem-Nem? How about 'No-No'? I can't be 'legendary adventurer 'Nem-Nem'."
Goan's slowly growing and broad smile, a far cry from his serious demeanor, told Nemu this nickname was not as dead as she hoped. 'Better nip this one in the bud.' Nemu pointed to Kuuderika who was rapidly failing at containing her laughter, and had finally started slapping the table as she tried to control herself… and continued to fail.
"I dub you… Ku-Ku the magic caster." Nemu said in the voice a Queen might use in giving a noble title. She then pointed to Goan, whose enormous charming grin had grown into a rare spate of full blown laughter at both of them, and… drew blank.
She pursed her lips. "OK, damn, I can't think of anything, but… if you call me 'Nem-Nem' to anyone, I swear to god's own bones, every time you fall asleep in camp, I'll drop Kuuderika's magic book on your testicles."
She tried very hard to maintain her serious expression, but in the end after a few moments more, she began to snicker, snort, and finally laugh along with her team.
Goan wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes after a short while, "OK, OK." He waved his hand between them to get them to stop laughing along with him and gradually forced his voice to become serious. "So nobody has any objections to a Wind Walk?"
"No, none here. When you have no destination, all directions are equal." Kuuderika said with a benign shrug.
"Sure, maybe I'm just being overly cautious here, my sneaky, suspicious nature coming out and all, but you've seen the same things I have. The Ongeku tensions being what they are…?" She stopped the question when Goan's knowing, cockeyed look appeared.
It was Goan's turn to shake his head with vigor. "Borderlands? Who said anything about a border? No, I want to go deeper, I want to go into the heart of their lands, where nobody has been before. I want to see what nobody has seen. Colonial policy has always been just to trade at the border, let the locals bring the resources to the colonies. But… well with land in the east starting to fill up with new cities? Most of the area is converted, and they're starting to send priests west. Policy will change. I say we go out there and find out what they can expect to run into!" He jammed his forefinger hard against the table and rested his other arm on the table just before his cup.
Nemu looked over to Kuuderika warily. "Ku…" She asked gently, and laid a hand on her adoptive sister's own, "Are you going to be OK? Their version of slavery isn't like it used to be back home. But you can still expect to see…"
Kuuderka gave Nemu a weak smile and covered the hand that touched her own. "Sister, thank you, but I'm long past that. I was a little girl back then. I'm not anymore. I might not like seeing things like auctions, but… it's not the same thing. What was that term they had for it?" She scratched her head and bit her lip as she tried to find the memory.
"Silver children." Goan replied quickly, "It's not always pretty but, you know, even their silver children have some protections under their laws. It's not like a nation of Wenmarks or the Slane Theocracy."
Nemu took up her coffee cup and drank the remaining liquid down with a dramatic flourish before slamming it down with a satisfying, loud, dramatic, "Ahh." She painted a smile on her face and shot to her feet. "So, let's go Wind Walk… or were both of you just being blowhards?" She winked, her team groaned.
"No puns, please no puns." Goan rolled his eyes, "You're even worse at jokes than His Majesty and a legion of Black Paladins combined!"
Nemu looked smugly self satisfied and got an evil glint in her eye. She shook one finger out at both of them. "Promise me you won't call me 'Nem-Nem' again and I promise no more puns for a month."
"Deal!" They shouted at the same time and shot to their feet in the same moment.
Kuuderika turned beet red when she realized the room had gotten more crowded, with a dozen or so tables now occupied and their little communal agreement had drawn attention from the room. She put her hand behind her head and bent it forward to look at them, and said, "Heh, sorry."
Collective shrugs met her as Goan threw down a few coins on the table and they walked out of the building and headed for the center of town.
Not even seeing the native being dragged away by the guards, while others carried a body away from where it had fallen, was enough to dampen their enthusiasm.
Kenmet grumbled while he worked. The stone was heavy as he picked it up. He winced at a pain in his back other than the manager overseeing the construction. 'Damn the bricks, damn that foreign trash telling me what to do. Damn that purple assed bitch for putting us here. Now what am I going to do? I can't do this all day at penal wages!' He groused and groused and complained in his own head. His comrades around him wore scowls just like his, they were all thinking the same thing. A few feet away, the immediate target of his anger stood pointing and talking with someone else while he went over a set of plans. 'A dwarf, no surprise, but they're such… well they may be short but they're a giant pain in my ass.' He didn't 'say' any of that, but he thought it.
The dwarf stroked his beard and pointed to him. "Hey, you! That's not the right side for those. Damnit, olives are so thick you'd think their brains had been pitted!" He laughed at his own humor, and Kenmet stopped and turned the wheelbarrow away from where he was working and sullenly, slowly moved it to the other side.
He cursed under his breath. 'Great… this side I've got to go up the scaffolding. This is heavy enough without that!' he mentally cursed the dwarf and all the other newcomers. 'Letting those others go just because they could pay a fine and… well damnit! This was our land first! Should have come back to us when we ousted that self indulgent trash that sold it in the first place!'
Curse after curse filled his thoughts to the rhythm of the wooden wheelbarrow's creaking. It wobbled a bit on the wooden scaffolding, and a stone slid off with a sickening scrape when he was near the peak of the third ramp. It came back, struck his arm, and for a moment Kenmet sighed with relief. 'Close one, that could have gotten ugly.' And as if the gods or fate were mocking him, it tilted over and fell down, struck the ramp, and toppled over the edge down thirty feet to the ground where it landed and shattered just a foot away from where the dwarf was standing.
The dwarf all but jumped out of his skin before glaring up at him. "Damn it stupid! You could kill somebody if you're not careful! Don't overload the wheelbarrow!"
The stocky dwarf shook his gloved, meaty fist up as he shouted to Kenmet, who rolled his eyes and said nothing.
'OK that was close, good thing nobody was right under it.' Kenmet sighed with relief, but then briefly indulged the fantasy of the loud mouthed, stocky dwarf getting brained instead. 'That'd teach him not to talk bigger than his height. But then… if dwarves couldn't do that, they'd never say a word. Oh what a world that would be!' He snickered as he wheeled the bricks over the building's roof, unaware that the overseer had stormed up after him.
"Oh, that's funny is it?! The dwarf snapped at him. "Was that on purpose, were you trying to kill me?!" The dwarf's chubby face was starting to get purple with rage as Kenmet whirled around to find himself facing the thrust out finger and accusing eyes of the supervisor.
"You're here with the penal group… well I hope you like it, because you're going to be working on public projects for the next ten years when I report this! You think you can do any damn thing you want?! You think it's funny?! We'll see who's laughin!" The dwarf snapped out his words so quickly that Kenmet barely had time to process them. When he did, he reached out in a panic to grab the dwarf.
"No! I didn't, I swear! It was an accident! I didn't mean… I'm sorry!" Kenmet's heart was pounding in his chest, his eyes were full of panic as he grabbed the dwarven supervisor at the arm. "Please! Don't report this!" He said urgently.
The overseer's eyes went wild, "Get off me! No!" He shouted and shook Kenmet away, but the panicked grip of the Ongeku worker was strong, and all this did was pull Kenmet against him.
Kenmet stumbled headfirst into the dwarf, and the two fell down in a heap. The dwarf tried to push his way out from under him, but too many beers and not enough ax swinging had left him relatively soft of body. Kenmet however, was by contrast, fairly strong, and as he fumbled to disengage himself, a stray kick toppled over a nearby stack of wooden planks. They tumbled over with a thunderous clatter, and several fell over the side where they crashed and broke down below.
"Help! He's trying to kill me!" The dwarf shouted and managed to scramble free, only to stumble backwards.
Kenmet's eyes flew wide, he could see it happening as if it were slow motion, the frantic clawing at nothing by the dwarf as he sought something to stop his stumble toward the edge. Horrified, Kenmet moved faster than he ever had before, pushing off with his legs, he rushed for the edge.
Both Kenmet and his supervisor desperately reached for one another, and, their eyes locked together as if in an embrace of a common understanding. That it was too late. Their open hands became desperate fists, and grabbed only air. The dwarf tumbled down with a horrified cry that told the world he understood that he was going to die.
The cry was cut off as the knowledge was proven true, a sickening thud and a crunch of stone meeting skull, and it was over. Cries came up from the other workers who rushed to the body and looked up to see Kenmet standing at the edge and staring down at them. 'This is bad.' Was Kenmet's only thought as the cries of horror had outrage added to the mix.
"It was an accident!" He shouted desperately as people called for the guards. "I didn't mean…" Kenmet cut off his own words and he rushed for the scaffold, he darted down from one level to the next. 'I've got to get out of here! I've got to run!' He cursed himself and wondered where he could go. 'I can't stay here, I can't provide for my family if I'm dead either… we'll flee, over the border, far away…' He was still mentally planning his escape when he hit street level and tried to sprint away from the scene, only for two of the foreign workers to tackle him. A burly orc and his goblin companion brought him to ground and pinned him. The orc kicked him in the face as soon as his head hit the stone. Kenmet felt his jaw fracture, heard the running guards close by, and tried to cry out again, "It was an accident!"
But nobody was listening, the savage thrashing continued under the frozen eyes of his friends, and it was as he was hefted up by a pair of human guards in black scalemail, that he realized it was useless.
"What happened here?!" One of the guards demanded sharply.
"It was an accident… I swear! I was mad but…" Kenmet tried to explain as he winced in pain. His words came out half grunted for all the good it did, as the behemoth of a human guard that was twisting his arm up behind his back, to raise it up higher at the spine. Pain shot through the Ongeku citizen laborer so sharply that he squeezed his eyes against it, crying out briefly before falling silent.
The big orc pointed squarely into Kenmet's chest, "He tried to kill Boki with a stone, then when Boki went up to confront him, well we could hear them talking. It got loud, Boki yelled for help, shouted that this one…" He spat on Kenmet's olive skin, "was trying to kill him, we could hear the scuffle from down here, some lumber fell. Then a minute later, before we really understood what was happening, Boki followed the lumber, and this one bolted." The orc folded his pointing finger into a fist. "Damn you… maybe Boki was a mean spirited bastard. But he worked hard, he paid us fair, and he never took safety shortcuts with us even if it cost'im more. Why'dja do'it? Why?!"
Kenmet hung his head, "I didn't… I didn't… it was an accident, he misunderstood, I tried to save him…" He raised his eyes and opened them to look around. Their accusing eyes, he was saved from them only by the sympathetic eyes of his fellow Ongeku penal laborers, his friends. But they were silent. Nobody spoke for him.
The biggest of the human guards looked them over, "Alright, get this mess cleared up, we'll send somebody by later, for the rest of your statements. This one…" He yanked the arm up slightly, prompting another brief cry from Kenmet, "will go to a cell till trial. The rest of you, don't go home until we get a record of everything."
"Trial?! But I didn't do anything! The stone was an accident!" Kenmet's jaw was killing him, but slurred as they were he still had his words, "Boki misunderstood, then… well, please! Believe me! I have a daughter to take care of! A family back home! I didn't do anything!" He shouted with a desperate wail to an unbelieving world, as he was bodily forced away, no matter his cries of innocence.