WaterBlade

Chapter Two

The walk back home seemed to take twice as long as the walk to the well had, and not just because of the added weight of the water. I was well aware of it sloshing against the sides of the bucket, but I was still careful not to let it spill over. Water was a precious resource here, and we were barely given enough to survive. Loosing even a little bit could mean the difference between life and death. Still, only half my mind was concentrating on keeping the water in the bucket. The other half was on the news I just heard, the king coming for a visit.

There were several of these camps scattered through the Southern Sands, but Syncoy, the name of our little hovel, was one of the smaller ones and hardly got any notice. It wasn't uncommon for the king to do inspections, but it was usually of the larger camps. I don't ever remember him coming to Syncoy, at least not since after I had been born. There had been one time where a large group of Imperial guards showed up in the middle of the night and dragged my mother from her bed. That was the night she had been executed. I tried not to think about it ever, but as I thought about it now, not even in that moment had the king bothered himself with our tiny little camp.

Shaking those morose thoughts from my head, I shouldered my way through the door of my home. Papa must have finished his work in the forge, because he was sitting at the little table we took our meals at, whittling away at a piece of wood and whistling a merry tune. His joy slid away when he saw the darkened expression on my face. I slammed the bucket down on the table hard, but not hard enough to spill any, letting that speak for my anger. "Did you know?" I asked through gritted teeth, ripping the scarf off my head.

"Know what?" Papa arched his dark eyebrows at me and I scoffed at his audacity.

"Don't play dumb. You're one of the council members, of course you knew. You knew the king was coming. Why didn't you tell me? I should have been the first to know!" My anger was quickly getting the best of me and my voice got louder and louder.

Papa quickly got up and grabbed my hands in an attempt to calm me. His hands were rough and calloused from all his time spent in the forge making weapons. I supported my own blisters, but my hands were still relatively smooth. "Hush Kida. Yes, I knew, and I'm sorry for not telling you, but I thought it would be best."

"Be best?" I repeated. "How am I supposed to hide myself if I don't know the king is coming?"

"Because," he sighed, squeezing my hands. "You worry too much, and worrying causes you to slip up, and slipping up can be fatal. This isn't something we can take lightly. You can't let him even think there might be something unusual about you."

For the second time that day, my blood went cold. All my anger faded and fear replaced it. "What if he already knows?" I whispered.

"That's highly unlikely," Papa said, but I could see the uncertainty in his eyes. He was just saying that to placate me. "If he did, he would have come much sooner."

I wasn't convinced. I had only been 6 years old when they executed my mother, and no one ever told me what crime she had committed to warrant paying with her life. I had my own theory that the king suspected she was like me, and that's why he had her killed. Because of course, the Imperial guards wouldn't do anything that wasn't an order from the king. They didn't just stroll in and decide to kill her for the fun of it, though I fully believed they were capable of such an act. No, it had been under the king's orders that she was executed. If my theory was correct, and he suspected she was like me, then it was possible he suspected my gifts as well, and that could be behind the real reason for this visit. I trembled at the thought. But Papa was also right. If the king did indeed know my secret, he would have come long before now. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't going to be a routine visit.