Seeds of Forfeit: Chapter 1

THE FORFEIT

Seven Years Before The Escape

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The sharp stone cut into his hand as he worked, chaffing and chapping his palm and his fingers. It took him five minutes to cut the branches with the stone, took him another ten to sharpen them. He bit into the bark and stripped the small sticks in minutes, then looked at his two weapons, gritted his teeth and whimpered. They were small, a foot and a half and no more, as thick as his thumb and light. Dunwich knew they would not work well, but he also knew he had to try.

Desperate, he broke into a run, headed for the warehouse where they had Deom and praying he made it in time. His six-year-old legs were strong and used to running. The neighborhood of the Forfeit was known to him. He weaved through the trash and the ragged stones, and back toward the warehouse where they had him tied up.

He could smell the faint scent of smoke and knew they had the fire already stoked. It would not be long before the fire was right and the cooking would begin. Not long before his friend would be skinned, not long before his friend would be spitted. He rushed toward the wall of the city and to the ramshackle buildings outside it.

Kingo was a powerful city, well cared for and mighty. It created many goods vital to the war effort the empire was embroiled in, and it was said to be one of the loveliest cities in the whole of the kingdom. But Dunwich had never seen it. He lived in the village of the Forfeit outside the city. This place was built as close to the walls of Kingo as possible, but none of its citizens were allowed in the real city. Forfeit were less than a normal citizen. Never a crime to kill a Forfeit, never a crime to take from them. Dunwich was a Forfeit. He had very few things that belonged to him. Even fewer things he cared about. Deom was one of those.

He hit the warehouse and grabbed the low-hanging sill of a boarded up window. He pulled himself up and leapt for another handhold. He fought his way up the side of the building until he reached the highest floor, then shoved aside a loose plank and shimmied in.

Dunwich fought his way through broken boards and shattered roofing tiles. The top three floors of this warehouse had collapsed a few months ago. The city had taken their goods from it then and it had become a squatters’ palace. Now he tiptoed around the splintered bits of the building and made his way to a long support that had crashed through the middle of the floor. The floor had given way and a great hole had been broken in. The support hung, slanted and precarious, broken through two floors below him and hanging through the ceiling of the next. Dunwich sat on the support and heard it groan.

He froze and waited, feeling the pillar shift under him. He waited for it to stop before he stood and slid down the length of the support. He dropped through three floors and landed on his feet on the next. He looked up at the pillar, still hanging and treacherous above him, and turned his back to it, making his way to the side of the room to a trap door. He hefted it slowly and peered into the room below him.

The broken barrel was half shattered, but the bottom half was still intact and they had built a fire in it. They had a pole driven into the floor that arched over the fire, where they would skewer Deom to cook him. Dunwich wiped tears and fought back the whimper. He touched the sharp sticks he had made, then grabbed the edge of the trap and flipped into the room below him. He dropped from the ceiling to the floor silently.

There were three other Forfeit kids here. All wore the quill hair of the Lathian race. These quills were mud brown, the mark of a Forfeit. The eyes white, the second mark of a Forfeit. For just the smallest moment, Dunwich wondered if his parents were Forfeit or did they have the bright colored quills, the wild colored eyes, of the rest of the Lathian race. He was used to this thought. It came to him often. Every time it came, it brought different emotions, and this time he thought of Deom. If his parents were Forfeit, then they were in this village somewhere and didn’t care about him or Deom. In that moment it was worse, worse than if his parents had tossed him out. He took the anger that came with those thoughts, he sharpened that hate and pointed it directly at the three before him who had Deom.

They were filthy just like him and wore what clothing they could piece together. Dunwich himself wore torn pants the size of a large man, tied around him and bound close to his body by clinging twine and leather straps. His shirt had a great gash in it that cut it almost in half and was stained in blood. He had a woman’s cloak with the edges ripped off and a dry, rotted hood, which he pulled over his head to shield his identity as long as he could. If they saw him, they would know his desire. If they recognized him, they would kill him.

Dunwich made his way around the room, ducking behind empty or broken crates and crawling behind random trash piles. He reached the door in the northeast corner of the room and tried the handle. The door swung open.

He slipped inside and saw Deom lying in the corner of the room, trembling and whining. Before him stood Cary, with a rusted knife broken halfway down the blade. It was the blade that would kill Deom, the blade that would skin him.

Dunwich stepped silently behind Cary and clapped a hand across his mouth. With both sharp sticks in his other fist, he drove the points into the boy’s neck. The rusted blade fell to the floor and the boy fought to staunch his bleeding neck as Dunwich dropped to his back and pulled the bleeding boy onto his chest.

He wrapped his legs around Cary, kept his hand clamped tight across his mouth, and tore the sticks free of the wound, making the exit wound as ragged and gaping as possible. Within the span of a few breaths, six-year-old Dunwich had murdered five-year-old Cary.

The body was carefully set aside as quietly as possible and Dunwich stood. He walked on wobbly legs to Deom, weeping, wrapped the big shaggy dog in his blood-coated arms and buried his face in the dog’s coat. Dunwich sobbed, letting himself feel the horror of the moment, before he pulled out his sharp stone and began sawing the dry leather cord that held Deom in place.

It took Dunwich a few minutes to cut the dog free, and Deom stood and panted at Dunwich, his long, rough tongue lapping the blood from Dunwich’s face and neck. The older kids had sliced most of Deom’s tail off last year and ate it. But the small ragged tail the dog did possess wagged quickly back and forth.

“We gotta get you outta here,” Dunwich whispered. He scooped up the rusted blade but tucked it in his twine-wrapped leggings. It was far too off-balanced to throw, and Dunwich was not good at melee. He heard people enter the room beyond this one and froze.

“…eat that mutt. Not much meat there, but a meal is a meal.” It was Jonna. She had once been his friend. He held her once while she was sick and fed her whatever scraps he could find until she was strong again. But she had sold him to a few passing men a day ago for an apple and the right to take away his dog. The horrors the men had performed on him soured all the love he once held for Jonna, and he did not care to leave her alive.

Whoever she was talking to was at the fire pit, and Dunwich heard the door handle before him shake, then the door swung open. Dunwich stepped back. When the door opened, he leapt.

He bowled her down and crawled atop her.

She was screaming, and the sound of it reminded him of the dark hours with the men she had sold him to. He climbed up her struggling body until he got to her face and shoved it to the ground. Before she could get her hands up, he drove the sharpest of the sticks into her eye. She howled and he pulled the stick out. He shoved it in her other eye and felt the sickening sensation of the eye popping. He pulled the stick out as he heard Deom snarling beside him. Jonna wailed and struggled, and Dunwich rolled away. He got to his feet, deciding he would leave her alive.

The last boy pulled a brand from the fire and swung it at Deom. Dunwich pulled the first of his sticks and, with a quick swing of his arm and a release, he threw the sharp stick. It sailed perfect, the way things always did. The boy screamed as the stick entered his eye. He dropped the flaming board and Dunwich threw the other stick. It caught the boy in the throat and the boy dropped to the ground, glugging on blood.

The brand sparked the floor to flame and Dunwich whistled to Deom. He made for the door, praying Jonna escaped before the fire consumed her. He didn’t want her dead anymore. Dunwich wanted to watch her stumble through the village of the Forfeit, blind, grasping and clawing for her life and for every scrap she could get.

He bolted for the door, his only friend loping beside him.

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At sundown, Dunwich heard the front gates of Kingo open. He heard horses. He heard the bellow of a mule and looked up at Deom. “The ratter’s here, boy. The ratter’s here.” Dunwich grabbed the rusty blade he had stolen and ran. People were coming from all over as Kingo’s ratter moved into the streets of the Forfeit slums. Dunwich knew he had to be fast. The trader would run out of rats quickly. So he shoved and he pushed and he ducked, at times he crawled, until he stood before the carriage of the ratter.

The carriage was tall, high off its wheels. Dunwich was sure the ratter did that on purpose so he would speak to the Forfeit from an elevated position. The carriage was covered in stacks of small, wooden cages, each with a screaming rat inside, some small, some massive. The small ones would fit in the palm. They were babies, nothing more. But being a baby, being young, didn’t save anyone in the slums of the Forfeit, and it wouldn’t save that rat. Some thought the babies were more desirable. This was a sign to stay away from that person. Their mentality, their ideas, spoke of the darkness of the slum.

They would say, “You get the baby rats, they have tender bones you can chew through and swallow. The bones, the power is in the wet, living bones. The bones make you stronger, they make you smarter. You buy the baby rats, you trade for the baby rats. And then while they’re still alive, you eat the rump first. You bite through hair, kicking legs, and you chew the delicate bones of the baby rat. Chew it all into a paste, swallow the whole thing. It might cut up your gums, but delicate, wet bone crunching in your mouth and sliding to your belly gives you more power than anything else. Keep that rat alive as long as you can, and save its skull for last. Cut the skull open, pull out the tiny brain, rip out the teeth—you can’t use that. You can eat the entire skull in one bite. Hang the brain, let it dry. When the brain of the rat is dry, you can put it in a pipe and smoke it and you’ll see your future.”

Dunwich remembered hearing this speech. It came back to him often, in the still nights when in the distance he could hear infants screaming in wretched pain in certain places of the slum. If you went to those places the next day, you would see a brain hung from a window drying in the sunlight. And a brain that size did not belong to any rat. Dunwich knew to stay away from those who traded for the baby rats.

When it came to trade, there were those Forfeit called the gardeners. They would buy as many different rats as possible and keep them alive, throw them in cages of their own making. These people would breed the rats to make as much of a food source as possible. You could trade with them to buy yourself a rat, but they were usually mangey. Their muscle on their body lean, nearly fatless creatures, because Forfeit had very little to feed to rat livestock.

Dunwich had to crawl a few times. He took a few kicks but came out right beside the ratter’s carriage. The ratter wore wildly colored, beautiful robes. Dunwich decided that was a lie. The robe was always the same, the outfit never changing. Over time he’d seen sections of it with cuts and fraying. There were patches. This guy was not as important a citizen of Kingo as he wanted the Forfeit to believe.

“Gather around, you mongrel swine! I’ll take everything. Anything. No babies over the age of three. Belt buckles will get you double worth. Of course I’ll take blades, any condition. I’ll throw out big rats for your blades. Ha, ha, ha, we like to think about you out here with no steel, fighting and killing and eating each other, with no clean way to do it.”

The ratter spat out into the crowd.

It landed on a woman’s face and Dunwich saw her swipe her palm across her face and lick it.

“I have one loaf of bread today,” and the entire crowd screamed. “The loaf of bread is for any attractive-looking Forfeit that I can take into the city for a few hours, that will do as she’s told. She’ll leave the city gates with a loaf of bread tomorrow morning.”

The ratter’s servants jumped off the side of the carriage and everybody pulled back. They were young, some of them dirty. Their clothes, little better than the Forfeit’s clothes. But to look one in the eye, to touch one, to argue with one, or to attack one, was to bring on a fate worse than death. They were to be approached respectfully. Dunwich got close to one of these. He lowered his head. He had to speak up over the crowd but he hoped he wasn’t yelling. All he knew about this servant was she had yellow quills and it was definitely a woman. He wanted no more details.

“I have this knife.” He held it out. With one hand gripping the handle tight, the flat of the blade resting on his open palm. He knew better than to hold it up with two open palms. Sometimes the servants just ripped it out of their hands and kicked them away. And there were those Forfeit that would get close and snatch other Forfeit’s treasures. “I have this rusty knife. It’s broken, but the edge is not chipped too bad. And it’s still thick in parts.”

She reached out with soft hands and touched his wrists. His heart stopped. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispered over the din.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I like your knife.” She pulled in closer. “Are you sure you ought not keep it? Are you sure you don’t need it to keep your dog safe?”

Dunwich’s blood went cold. How this girl knew about his dog, he did not know. But no good could come from that. No good could come from any of the citizens of Kingo knowing about Deom. He could lie to her and tell her he doesn’t have a dog. The lie might anger her. He could talk about Deom. Maybe it might soften her heart and she might give him a better deal on his knife, or even a free rat. He hated the part of him that for one split second, the time it would take to draw in a breath in horror, for just that one beat he thought about offering Deom to her for a better deal. The thought came and bounced off his mind, just bounced off his mind, but he hated himself that it came to him at all.

He knew not to look at her face, so he kept his eyes on her feet. She was wearing shoes, as all the citizens of Kingo did. But these were odd. They were not the boots or leather shoes he saw from the guards or other traders. These shoes seemed to be made of thick cloth, and they covered just the foot, ignoring the ankle altogether. They were dirty but pretty.

“I can protect my friend. And if you knew him, oh ho ho,” Dunwich chuckled quietly. “You would know you don’t have to protect him much. He’s pretty fierce. Now, I need a meal. I’ll trade you this knife for a rat.”

She was still holding onto his wrists and he didn’t know what to do with that contact. Her hands were soft. There were no rough spots like the hands on every Forfeit. Every Forfeit had rough spots. He thought for a minute to ask her why, then they both heard the snap of a whip, and she flinched. “I’ll get you a good rat.” She let go of his wrists and grabbed his chin. She lifted his eyes to hers and he snapped them closed as his gaze reached the height of her nose. “I’ll get you a good rat.”

She climbed onto the ratter’s carriage, dropped his blade in a bucket before the ratter could see its worth, and she pulled a large, a huge black rat from one of the cages. She leaned over the edge of the carriage, dropping to her knees. Dunwich kept his attention on the rat so he wouldn’t look her in the eye. “Do you want him alive or dead?” she asked.

“Dead.”

She snapped the rat’s neck, and with both hands, handed it to Dunwich. He stuffed it under his shirt, feeling the sharp nails against his skin. He turned around to look at the crowd, and heard behind him, in the soft sweet voice of the trader’s servant, “Dog boy.”

He turned and looked at her. He accidentally saw a flash of her face, then threw his gaze back down at the muddy wheel.

“Dog boy, what’s the dog’s name?”

“I named him Deom. I heard the guards using the word but I don’t know what it means. I just, I heard Deom and I, I had never heard a Forfeit say the word, so is it weird that I thought it would be the best name I could give him? I don’t know what language it is, but…”

“Dog boy, look at me.” People were already shoving him closer and pulling him back. He needed to run, fight his way through the crowd. He had a treasure and he could feel the oily fur of the rat rubbing against his stomach, the tail limp and pressed against his abdomen.

“Please don’t make me look at you,” Dunwich said. “It could cost me my life.”

“Please dog boy, look at me.”

And Dunwich did.

As he lifted his head, he didn’t know what would happen to Deom if he was struck dead in that moment. He didn’t know what would happen to Deom if the trader glanced down and saw him looking one of the servants in the eyes. He did happen to know that if he didn’t look this girl in the face, he’d regret it forever. In some unspeakable way, the horror of looking at her face meant more to him than Deom’s life. Because Dunwich had never looked in the face of one of the people of his race other than a Forfeit. He looked up at her, combed yellow quills. He saw her chin. It was no more beautiful than any other chins of the Forfeit girls. He saw her lips. They were redder than any lips he had ever seen before. They glistened in the sun and he imagined there was some sort of grease she used to make them wetter. He looked at the nose. No different, no more unique than any other nose he had ever seen. And then he looked at the eyes.

The irises were pink run through with purple. They were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. This was worth dying for. He didn’t know if it was worth Deom’s life. But it was definitely worth his. He couldn’t pull his eyes away from hers as she leaned forward. She whispered, and though the crowd around him shouted and screamed, he heard her words with perfect clarity. “Deom means purity,” she said. “In the Lathian language, deom means purity.”

As the crowd pulled him away, he looked at her frantic. He yelled, “What does purity mean?” She stood and yelled. He couldn’t hear what she said.

People fought to get his rat, and he tried to be as defensive as possible. He knew how to move with a treasure. Every treasure you get, you wrap your arms around it fully, you bend over, push with your head, get as low to the ground as possible. And never stop moving. But purity. Deom. The name deom was another word for purity. What did that mean? He walked dumbly, head high. He had just seen the eyes of a Lathian girl, what he hoped was a pretty one. Arms slack around his belly, and everyone moved out of his way. No one had ever moved out of his way. Dunwich watched them all stare at him as the crowd parted. He wondered at it.

Deom met him and they ran off together. Before he was around the corner of the alley of the slum of the Forfeit, he took one last look in the servant’s direction, but the crowd had swallowed her up, and there was no seeing anything about her.

“Here, Deom, hold this.” He threw the rat. Deom snapped it up into his jaws but, though Dunwich knew the dog was slowly starving to death, Deom did not eat the rat. They ran through the alleys of the slums until they found a place. It was a hole dug under a building that they could both fit in. And Dunwich began to eat, hair and skin, drink blood, and rip the chewy muscle of the biggest rat and the most generous meal he’d ever had. Every time he held the rat out for Deom, the dog would sniff it, turn and look at Dunwich for a breath, hungry eyes, salivating jaws, and Deom would take the smallest of nibbles. “She says your name is purity,” Dunwich said around a mouthful of blood and fur. Deom snapped the thick tail off and chewed. “Do you know what purity means, boy?” Another bite, and he could feel the fat of the rat’s body squelching between his teeth. This was a good one. “Well, I don’t know what purity means, but I’m not gonna start calling you purity.” Deom barked, and Dunwich laughed. They shared the rat, and before he threw the skull to Deom, he filed all the teeth down to nubs.

He curled up in the hole, pulled Deom onto his chest, as the sky went dark and memories of her pink and purple eyes lit up like stars in his mind. Dunwich promised himself no matter what it cost him, he would never be afraid to look a Lathian in the eyes again. It would cost Dunwich everything. It would give Dunwich a life. But there, in the hole, under the corner of the building, he made that promise to himself.

Before he fell asleep, he felt the muscles of his loving dog jump, saw the lips curl, and he knew Deom was having a nightmare. He shook the dog slightly and it calmed. Dunwich closed his eyes. That night, for the first time, Dunwich did not have a nightmare. That night, for the first time, Dunwich had a dream under pink and purple stars. 

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Three weeks later, Dunwich broke out into a run from the village and into the dark morning, Deom running beside him. They moved from the city into the country and out to the forest.

Dunwich knew these woods well. He cut his way around the natural features, jumping blind over rocks and splashing through streams. How many times he had made this run, he could not tell, but he was making it again now. His feet pounded the ground as he rushed through the morning.

He came up a ridge over the treetops and stopped to look back.

The village seemed a ragged grouping of weeds pressed against the wall of the city, the city a glittering jewel in the morning air. Warm lights brought it to a golden hue that seemed to house all the warmth and goodness in the world. Kingo was the seat of the noble lord, the most beautiful city in the whole of the land. To find anything grander one would have to travel for months through an ocean of grassland. Dunwich felt his stomach rumbling and the ever-present nag of hunger, but he sat on the peak of the ridge to look at the city he would never be allowed into.

Dunwich pulled again at the puzzle that dominated his life. Every waking moment since he could remember had been wrapped around this one question.

Why? What was so bad about the Forfeit caste that they were shunned? He had no disease he knew of. He was not any more of a criminal than he needed to be. His brown quills and white eyes made him less of a person in some way than a Lathian with colored quills and colored eyes, but he did not understand how. He squeezed his muscles, finding them big and tight. He thought about his body’s ability to throw and fight. He knew that was not where he lacked. Physically he was as mighty as any other boy his age.

He touched his chest, feeling his heart beating, and started to wonder about the things he could not feel. Was he in some way empty of a thing that was supposed to be there? Was he hollow and he couldn’t tell? Maybe his mind was inferior. Maybe he was an idiot and could not learn the fine things like building and art. He had seen the height of the wall. He lived in its shadow every day. Was it possible his mind was not complex enough to work out the intricacies and problems that came with building a thing like that?

He knew the statues that decorated the wall’s alcoves and recesses. Was he not capable enough to render stone into a likeness or other things of that sort? Dunwich did not know why he was a lesser form of life than those who lived in the city, but as he looked at Kingo shining in the morning sky, he wished for just one day that he could walk its streets and witness its marvels.

When he could think about it no more, he rose and broke out into a run again. He needed to get back to his nest before night hit and everyone was looking for a place to sleep. He had a good nest. He did not want it taken because others thought he was dead.

He burst through the forest and into the fields. He dropped low as he heard a distant wolf’s cry and his heart skipped in fear. If a wolf found them, Dunwich knew Deom would not be capable of fending it off. Deom would die before letting Dunwich be hurt, and he did not want to chance his dear friend’s life just for a meal. His mind told him to turn back. Do not waste time, but run as fast as he could away from the wilds of the night and back to his nest. But he had not eaten in three days, and yesterday, he swooned and nearly collapsed. He needed to eat.

He had to hurry. He ran as fast as he could, through the fields still waking from the ground, and headed deeper into the fields of ripe foods.

He hit the ground when he got within eye shot of the farming village. He dropped on all fours and crawled through the rows. The farmers had slings and would hurl stones if they saw his silhouette against the sky. He crawled until he found the only food he could get. If he worked his way around the fields, he could find corn. The fields to the east grew snap peas and radishes, but he had no time to get there. There was a wolf out tonight. He needed to get his food as fast as he could.

He dug frantic with his fingertips at the dry ground, pulling up fingers of dirt until he could work his hand in deeper. He fought and dug and struggled until he pulled free a turnip.

It was covered in soil, so he rubbed it as clean as he could before biting into it. It was hard as a stone and he could at first only scrape his teeth across it, but after a while of spitting dirt and scraping, Dunwich found a tooth hold and pulled back a bitter mouthful of turnip.

He knew he needed to run, but could not stop himself from eating a few more bites. When he had half of a turnip choked down, he dug up four more and ran.

He grunted to Deom and they ran home.

On the way to his nest, he stopped and dropped two turnips off at the pit. The old men who gathered there were either broken from age or sick with some wasting pox. Dunwich did not stay long enough to talk to them, but he threw two turnips to them and ran off. He stayed in the darkness of the surrounding area, making sure not to let them see who he was.

If they saw who had fed them, they would beg him for food every day of his life. It would become his responsibility to feed them, and he had enough trouble feeding Deom and himself.

Dunwich ran the plank from the pile of trash to the roof of the leaning building. It was a wide enough plank for Deom to walk, and it led to Dunwich’s nest.

There on the roof of the building hung a canvas tarp Dunwich had bound to the side of the building to form a sling. He climbed into it and dropped into the pouch-like nest. Dunwich felt the sway of the pouch and let himself relax. He heard Deom settle on the ledge of the building and knew if anyone came to hurt him or steal from him, Deom would warn him.

Dunwich closed his eyes and summoned up the image of the city beside him glowing in beauty and wondered if this was it for him. Was this the only thing life could give him? He started thinking about what else he could do. How long could this go on? How long would he allow himself to live this way?

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