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  SECRETS OF SARAI

  The Four Horsemen of Sarai Book 1

  J. M. THOMAS

  SECRETS OF SARAI

  COPYRIGHT © 2019 J. M. THOMAS

  FIRST EDITION JANUARY 2019

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN 978-1-792127-19-9

  COVER DESIGN BY STARJEWEL COVERS

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED BY ANY MECHANICAL, PHOTOGRAPHIC, OR ELECTRONIC PROCESS OTHER THAN FOR “FAIR USE” AS DEFINED BY LAW, WITHOUT THE PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR. THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. NAMES, CHARACTERS, BUSINESSES, PLACES, EVENTS, LOCALES, AND INCIDENTS ARE EITHER THE PRODUCTS OF THE AUTHOR’S IMAGINATION OR USED IN A FICTITIOUS MANNER. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL PERSONS, LIVING OR DEAD, OR ACTUAL EVENTS, IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

  Acknowledgements

  Cover by Tessa Escalera at Starjewel Covers.

  A special thanks to everyone who contributed to getting this book out there. You guys are the best!

  To the readers who gave invaluable feedback: Leah, Dee, Tessa, Paul, Michael, and David, a hundred thank-yous!

  And a special thank you to my husband, David, for his support, encouragement, and enthusiasm. Thank you for making dinner or ordering pizza with no questions asked because I had that look in my eye that said the book claimed my soul.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue 1

  Chapter 1 – Mechanical Wings 6

  Chapter 2 – The Fair 17

  Chapter 3 – The Hunters 34

  Chapter 4 – Safety 65

  Chapter 5 – Healing 84

  Chapter 6 – Growing 111

  Chapter 7 – Learning 122

  Chapter 8 – The Hunted 149

  Chapter 9 – Living 185

  Chapter 10 – Dying 205

  Prologue

  Sano paced the bare foyer. He took unusually long strides for his short legs as he searched for a distraction from his nervousness. Despite being a reception area, the foyer was anything but inviting. The meeting room door was locked, the door behind them locked upon them entering, and the hallway to their right ended in a brightly-lit, blank wall.

  There was nowhere to sit, no art on the taupe walls, and even the carpet was a nondescript single shade of gray. All that could be done was wait, each second seeming to tick by slower than the last. Sano turned to his companion, a rough-and-ready businessman who leaned casually against the bare wall.

  “What are we going to do if they kick us out, Larsen? Where are we going to go with over three thousand specimens? We must keep working on the prototype for the five hundred series, or this is a total waste of effort.”

  “Leave this to me. They’ve got nothing on us.” Larsen made a shooing motion with his left hand.

  “They know, or we wouldn’t be here!” Sano’s nervousness charged the entire room with an anxious energy. Answering Sano’s incriminating questions while on the opposition’s turf put Larsen on edge and made it harder for him to maintain his relaxed external composure.

  “Of course, they know! But now we get to find out exactly what they know and tease out how they’re getting this information.” Larsen shrugged. “Calm down.”

  Sano tried to mimic his companion’s casual demeanor by leaning against the wall. “Their technology is so foreign, it could be a bug, not a leak.”

  Who said anything about a leak? Let’s just see what they know first.”

  At that moment, a door opened at the end of the hall, and soft footfalls came from the bright passage beyond the foyer. Though Larsen dared a peek in their direction, his eyes could not adjust to the light’s intensity. Six figures entered, each enrobed in deep blue uniforms with black pleats down the front. Dark eyes glinted from beneath navy hoods with a black fabric shield masking the lower half of each face. They appeared as bad omens, shadows of doom breaking through the light.

  The first robed figure, a man by the looks of his arm hair and broad, flat chest, approached the door to the conference room. A hand protruded from the dark inlet of his robe, and he gripped the metal door handle. A red light emanated briefly from the back of the handle at his index fingertip, and a faint beep sounded from the wall to his right. The door lock disengaged, and he was able to pull the door open easily. They put the fingerprint scanner in the handle? How very... untrusting, Larsen thought.

  The leader gestured for Sano and Larsen to enter ahead of the others. They saw two plain, wooden chairs on one side of a long, obsidian conference table, and six sleek, padded chairs lining the opposite side. The eerie procession took their places and sat, the first man closing the door and sitting gracefully at his place in the center.

  “Sit,” he commanded, rather than offered, and the two men complied.

  The man on the far left was the first to move. His hand reached into his wide sleeve and pulled an electronic tablet from a hidden pocket. He read from the list: “First, by deceiving your incubators by impersonating religious clergy, so that their consent to your experimentation was not informed.” The reader paused, his voice shaking with unbridled disgust. “Second, mass extermination of your incubators by gathering them for a fictitious conference and dropping a bomb on them…”

  The other five listened in silence. Only the occasional sudden gesture or sharp intake of breath indicated their shock and horror as the list went on for what seemed like hours. If Sano had thought the lobby wait was arduous, he must be in agony now.

  “Due to these egregious and numerous instances of gross ethical breaches, we are invoking the final clause of our agreement. Your corporation has one calendar year from this day to clear your people from the island and be gone from this place.”

  “Your kangaroo court without lawyers or jury… Do you think you can shut us down just like that? Our years of work to improve our world…” Larsen broke the silence with a ready retort, going on the offensive to save his pet project.

  “You have no rights here, interloper,” a female voice hissed from the right.

  But Larsen wasn’t finished. “If we have no rights, it is because your laws do not apply to us! And my world’s laws have no reach in your universe, so by what law of yours can you stop us?”

  “Do you wish for us to come by force, then?” The man in the middle spoke in a smooth tone, as if his threat of violence was only a reprimand from a parent to a petulant child.

  “Only if you wish that your own people discover that you allowed these things to continue on your own world. They remained unchecked, even with your obvious cognizance that they happened.” Larsen grinned with this declaration and folded his arms.

  This caused the council to sit up straight in their chairs. Then, the individual on the end folded his hands together and interlocked his fingers, his elbows scraping across the table so he could lean as close to Larsen as possible. “And who will you tell them allowed it?”

  The point of the masked faces became abundantly clear. These people would not respond to Larsen’s bullying attempts.

  “You have demonstrated that we cannot trust you. You now have one month. Any additional attempts at blackmailing us will only shorten your time frame further. On the thirty-first day from this one, we will wipe our island clean of your filth.” A wave of his hand adjourned the meeting, and the masked figures filed out the way they had come. They left Sano and Larsen to see themselves out.

  Larsen was the first to speak. “Hmm. Well, that may not have gone well, but now we have what we need and know who the leak was.” He pulled a small pistol from his coat’s inner pocket and pointed it at Sano’s head.

  Sano’s hands went up and cupped toward Larsen in a pleading gesture. “What? No! I would never sabotage this project. My entire life wa
s on the line for this, same as yours!”

  Yes, but it had to be you.”

  “Why would you even say that?!”

  “Does it even matter now?” Larsen held the pistol steady against Sano’s sweaty temple. “On your knees, old pal.”

  “Tell me, please!” He gasped and sputtered. “What can I do to make you re-re-reconsider?” Sano trembled, moving as slowly as possible from his chair to the floor.

  “Then tell me why.”

  “What?” A trickle of urine soaked the floor, running down Sano’s shaking legs as he kept his hands aloft and stumbled to his knees.

  “Look, you weren’t at the meeting, okay? We put a gag order on the info, so you’re the only one who didn’t know.”

  “I don’t understand!”

  “Three-eleven survived. I don’t know how she managed to restart her heart after you stopped it, but she did. You failed, Sano. Now it’s time to go.”

  “What…how? There must be some mistake!”

  “Oh, there’s no mistake. Our man at the hospital in Issachar walked into a room one morning to do his daily rounds, and there was three-eleven, standing over a patient like Death herself.”

  “Oh God.” Sano dissolved into sobs.

  “Why’d you do it, old pal? That is quite the impressive cover-up to convince the team to scrap years of work.”

  “You never saw!” Sano shook his head at the memory. “What bakemono we created. Who makes little children who rip their own fathers apart on command? We were monsters making monsters.”

  “So that’s what became of poor Alexeev. I always wondered.” Larsen’s lips pressed together for a second. “We really have succeeded, then. I’ll collect the team, pick up three-eleven with her handler, and let these aliens clean up the rest.”

  “She has a name, you know.” Sano looked up at his old comrade, an ounce of courage rising up to win out over his exhausted panic.

  “That’s the problem with you, Sano.” Larsen sighed and pulled the trigger. The crack echoed through the mostly empty room. Ears ringing, he watched the blood mingle with the urine as Sano’s body grew still on the cold, dark tile. “You had to give them names.”

  Chapter 1 – Mechanical Wings

  When Kestra squinted her eyes and forced her vision out of focus, the few dozen nobles and interested townspeople looked like a rabble ready to press in and force her over the cliff behind her. She took a few deep, practiced breaths and forced herself to steady her gaze. She met each pair of eyes as she called out for all to hear:

  “When people watch a majestic bird take wing, lift from the ground, and soar above them, no one judges that creature for doing what it is made to do. You see the structure of its wings, feel the lightness of its bones, hear the wind whooshing beneath each beat, and you know it peeked from its shell for one purpose! It is not satisfied with just living, mating, and perpetuating its species. It makes its world better by ruling the sky.

  “With my new wing prototype, this is exactly what I plan to do. I want to bring the sky to the people of our world. When the design is tested and people are trained and equipped to use it, this device will enable us to do many things. We can search large areas for lost people and animals, see danger and report it quickly, explore places not accessible by foot, horse, or boat, and much more. This prototype is only the beginning, the clumsy beatings of a fledgling learning what it is truly capable of. But with care and time, something truly incredible awaits.”

  Pride surged through Kestra’s body as she stepped up to the platform and slid her arms into the controls of the massive pair of brown, mechanical wings. Every feathery scrap of leather had been soaped, every rivet gleamed where the sun struck it. Kestra slid her strong hands into the soft leather control loops and followed the connections through the leads to the final rounded wingtip.

  “Sprell?” She nodded to her sister, a tall, white-haired young woman with ice-blue eyes who stepped in from the left and deftly tightened the final leather straps holding the wings in place.

  With a final check over each connection, Sprell took a moment to whisper, “You’ve got this” into Kestra’s ear. She stepped back down to join the modest crowd below.

  “Women and men of our community, I give you the sky.”

  With that, Kestra leaned back and dropped off the platform overhanging the cliff into the deep canyon below. The onlookers gasped, first in concern, then in wonder as Kestra flipped and caught the updraft to come back into view. She soared gracefully around the canyon, dropping at one point to lift a basket with a hook she wore on one leg. Then she powered up with a mighty flap of the wings. The single beat lifted her body and the heavy contraption back into the breeze to glide up to her starting point.

  Her hands worked with constant, fluid motion at the double-rein controls. She adjusted pitch and height with straps she held in each hand. One with the wind, Kestra coursed in its drafts through the canyon, dropping onto the platform with a quiet thud. Her landing was greeted with enthusiastic applause from the wide-eyed spectators.

  The sisters beamed at each other as Sprell undid the first few straps of Kestra’s wings so her sister could open the basket and share its contents with the crowd. The peaches, which Sprell had picked from the canyon commons orchards just that morning, were a little bribe for the members of the council. These nobles would now have to decide what rules and restrictions to put on Kestra’s research, and under what conditions she’d be allowed to continue developing her wings, if at all.

  “You nailed it, sister!” Sprell looked as if she would burst with pride. “They’ll be creating a new class of person now. Instead of scholar class, you’ll be the first of a whole new clan — of flyers!”

  “I wouldn’t be so quick,” Kestra said breathlessly, her diplomatic smile firmly pasted on, her eyes casting the smile like a fishing line, with a wave toward anyone who glanced in her direction. She lowered her voice, “See, huddled in the left corner. The furrowed brows of those three already tell the tale of their opinion.”

  Sprell looked their way and strained to focus out the other noises, but only caught snippets.

  “…that girl should learn her…stick to…instead of flapping… creating injuries…” It was enough that Sprell could tell that her sister was right.

  “Well, perhaps they need more peaches to sweeten their tongues. Who are they, anyway?” Sprell asked.

  “Mostly council tagalongs,” Kestra supplied, scanning their faces. “I only know one or two. They’re local, established families looking for influence. I wish they’d use some of that energy to move the rest of the clans forward a bit…”

  “…Instead of burning it all up in pursuit of their own gain. Yeah, they can keep their politics. I want nothing of it all.” Sprell yawned broadly at the mention of a day wasted groveling for power. How boring. “No, Kestra, what they need is a few more of you to grab them by their ruffled shirt fronts and drag them into the glorious light of good sense.”

  “Ahaha, no.” Kestra rolled her eyes a little. “You leave the politics to those who are interested in such things, and I will leave the shirt-grabbing to you.”

  “And to you, Kestra,” Sprell added, beaming, “we will all leave the sky!”

  “They aren’t watching you anymore, sis.” Kestra lowered her voice again, almost whispering to Sprell. “You can cut the enthusiasm by about half.”

  The smile on her sister’s face slid back and her shoulders drooped as she sighed in relief. “Thanks. I can’t ever tell. It always feels like they’re watching.”

  “Well, the theatrics will just draw attention to yourself. Try listening with your eyebrows raised—it’s a gesture that you’re curious, either about them or what they have to say. Either way, their attention will turn inward.”

  “Perfect. I shall test this forthwith.” Now it was Kestra’s turn to sigh in relief. She knew Sprell adored her, but at best she was a handful. She watched Sprell glide through the crowd with practiced grace and lock on her target.
Eyebrows alight, she plied the poor, hapless clod in his stuffy outfit with rapid-fire questions. He looked like an interrogation victim. Kestra chuckled a little at the sight of him mopping his forehead and trying to look like he wasn’t hiding a bald spot. Soon, Sprell had him completely distracted and talking about himself, and it was as if she no longer existed. Kestra turned to engage the crowd a little, wishing she could so easily seem to disappear.

  ***

  The sweet peach was ripe enough that tangy juice started to escape and trickle down Erys’ chin as he bit into it. He caught the errant stream with his handkerchief before it reached his favorite dress shirt. As the taste assaulted his senses, his eyes watered. It was perfection, and he used the energy it gave him to tune more closely into the conversations in his vicinity.

  Each person had just witnessed the same spectacle, but each saw a completely different event, depending upon the lens of their own desires. Erys knew their reactions would be the key to understanding their motivations, and some of the discussions he heard sounded a bit rehearsed. It seemed that many had come with their minds already made up as to how they would respond to the idea of giving people flight.

  “And what do you think of this demonstration, Sir Erys?” The thick, heavy lips of Lord Kimball’s own mouth dripped words of bittersweet condescension. He seemed to think of Erys as a child. Or, more likely, he thought of Erys’ family as still being exalted craftsmen, unworthy of his own more elegant company.

  “Surely your refined eyes are not swayed by the drama put on before you.” Lord Kimball rocked back on his heels and peered down his hooked nose. He paused for only half a breath before Erys cut in, ready for his opportunity whether the noble was prepared to give him one or not.

  “Oh, I refuse to be swayed to any side by a dramatic presentation,” Erys smiled. “It will be a full week before I will have considered the angles adequately enough to have made my decision. But when I have, I can be confident that I did not rush to my opinion without sufficient thought.” Erys took a long, slow bite to give the arrogant lord a moment to be flustered by his own premature conclusion, then softened the blow.