Routine Delivery

Kurri is buried alive. He can barely breathe under the pungent katal leaves, big and heavy and slimy. He holds his breath and stays perfectly still. He can hear them. Through a gap in the wooden panels of the cart he can see one pass them by--a brown-scaled drake with long spines lining its head--on its saddle a man with a black helmet, black pants, and a long white coat. A pistol and a baton hang from his belt, and on his chest is pinned a polished silver star with eight points--Imperial Sentinel Corps.

Krev keeps the cart moving at a steady pace. The sentinel slows his pace as his drake turns its head toward the cart and flicks out its forked orange tongue. Kurri’s eye makes contact with the beast’s yellow eye, a black slit down the middle. He shuts his eyes and clasps his holy symbol tighter.

“Morning, officers,” Krev says. He keeps his calm demeanor like nothing is wrong.

“How ‘bout a free sample?” the nearby sent says.

“Ha! If you’ve got a dehydrator handy, sure,” Krev says. “Otherwise you’ll have to take it up with the company store. You can tell ‘em I sent you, but I doubt it’ll carry much weight.”

Krev and the sentinels laugh together.

“Chi and Dyrh’s blessing on your harvest, sir,” the sentinel says.

“Much appreciated,” Krev says.

“Good day, and all hail our Emperor Mallikus,” another sent out of view says.

“Hail Mallikus,” Krev says.

The sents pass them by and Krev keeps the same steady pace. Kurri waits. Not long ago he would have talked to them just as calmly. The white coats and silver badges were a symbol of safety, protection. What a brilliant con. What would happen to him now if they discovered him in this cart? Zal’s words echo in his head: “They’ll throw you in a place worse than your worst nightmares, and slave you until you die from blight or exhaustion. Terrorists don’t have trials, Kurri. You have to avoid the sents at all costs, above all else, there ain’t one that’s on your side. All sents are bastards.”

“All clear,” Krev says, level headed as ever.

Kurri bursts out above the leaves, gasping for breath. He wipes off his face, not knowing if it’s sweat or slime. Filla beside him climbs out of her cover next and sits on the edge of the cart. Kurri scrambles to get out of the leaves and sits next to her. Across from them, Nadia emerges, graceful and stoic, rising from the pile and taking her seat on the opposite rail.

Nadia is a slender woman, shorter than Zal, with black skin. She reaches up and brushes bits of slimy green leaf out of the short black curls of her hair, then brushes off her black field jacket and adjusts the grey bandana around her neck. She rests her black leather boots on the leaf pile and brushes the rest of the detritus from her black pants. She comes equipped for a fight, with two long knives and a loaded pistol hanging from her belt, and a powder flask and a satchel full of lead hanging from the strap across her chest.

In front of Krev are two drakes, smooth black-scaled Twilight and a bright blue drake with impressive white spines running down its sides named Lightning.

“Is it your first sent encounter, Kurri?” Nadia says. She speaks softly, in a heavy Sabakuan accent.

Still shaking, Kurri answers, “N-no. Me and Zal passed by a few on the way here.”

“Don’t pay it no mind Kurri,” Krev says. “They’ll never suspect anything of an old farmer bringing his crop into town, and the scent of fresh cut katal leaves will overpower their drakes’ tongues.”

“Still, do not let your guard down,” Nadia says, glancing toward him with her dark brown eyes. “There is no disguise that can not be seen through. What ultimately keeps you alive is your ability to defend yourself.”

“Sucks for you to have to escort two little medics, then,” Filla says.

“No worry. I have heard Krev is quite the fighter,” Nadia says.

“Ha! Maybe twenty years ago,” Krev says.

Krev Koronova is the true anti-Zal--dressed in aged brown hemp cloth that he keeps in working condition, sewn together neatly. His grey hair sticks out from under his wide brimmed hat--woven from dried black vines. His white colonizer skin is tanned from decades of long hours in the fields and marred by scars from iron tools and burns from harvesting toxic katal leaves. His eyes look like the clear blue sky--comforting. He is everything a mountain person is supposed to be, and nothing that an anarchist is.

Kurri looks down at himself. His cotton pants and his grey jacket are nearly stained brown already. The bandana around his neck is unfamiliar, sometimes its presence startles him. He reaches behind his medic bag for his canteen and takes a drink. The sun is blazing hot down in the valley, but the shadow of the mountain is close ahead.