NaNoWriMo 08 - Excerpt #1

I'm over 17,000 words now...that might sound impressive, but it's not comforting when you consider the fact that to make it to 50,000 words in November, I have approximately 33,000 words to write in a week. *gasps and chokes* BUT anyway...here's the first excerpt, and keep in mind that this is a very rough draft. Through this whole NaNoWrimo thing, I have finally learned how to vanquish the inner editor - that little guy who looks over your shoulder, reads what you've written, and laughs.

So...without him hanging around...here's a bit of what I have so far. Enjoy and comment! :-D


“What are you doing here?” the kitchen supervisor asked her the next morning, in a tone of some genuine surprise.

Tyatsai stopped dead and wondered for a moment if she was still dreaming.

“Didn’t they tell you?” asked the supervisor, waving a few more slaves in.

“Tell me what?” Tyatsai said, truly bewildered.

“You’ve been transferred to the laundry, as of this morning,” the supervisor said. “I would’ve thought they would have told you last evening.”

“I had no idea,” she said, her shock audible. Transferred? “Where – where do I go?”

“Two hallways over to the left,” said the supervisor, and turned to the next slave.

Tyatsai turned away and walked slowly in the direction the supervisor had pointed out, now certain she was still in some sort of nightmare. Steam billowed out of the open doorway and a thick scent of animal lard permeated the air. She made slow progress into the room, her mind still reeling and her feet not fully willing to keep going.

The laundry was huge, at least twice the size of the kitchen. Along the right side were large vats of hot water, the source of most of the steam; shelves stacked with round brushes, cakes of soap, bolts of folded linen, and flat irons lined the left side. Another, smaller courtyard was visible through the door in the back of the room, as were the lines of drying laundry stretched across the landscape. At least fifty slaves had crowded into the room, forming exceptionally straight lines beside the vats or the shelves, and all of them were eerily silent.

The supervisor was making slow progress along one of the lines, looking each slave over once or twice, as Tyatsai stepped slowly into the room. Only the supervisor, a stocky man who was barely Tyatsai’s height, looked up at her awkward entrance. “And you are?” he said, his words echoing around the room.

“Tyatsai Falcons,” she said.

“Oh,” he said, sniffing disinterestedly. “Yes, they told me you were being transferred here. Line up with the rest, along this side. Yes, right there.”

Tyatsai followed the other slaves’ lead and stood almost unnaturally straight, keeping her head facing forward and her arms at her sides. Though their heads didn’t move, a few of the slaves chanced curious glances at her, so she did the same.

The supervisor continued down the line until he reached the slave next to her. He examined him for several long moments, but found nothing out of place and sniffed in a disappointed manner as he moved on to Tyatsai. She tensed immediately as his eyes moved up and down her, focusing particularly on her hair, which she sheepishly remembered that she had done nothing with that morning.

“Hair,” he pointed out, “needs to be neater. Hands need to be cleaner.” He took one last look, then sniffed and turned away. He stood in view of both lines and magnified his voice slightly as he said, “This line to the vats. Half of this line, collect the hanging laundry and fold it. The other half – go and collect the laundry from the officers and the apprentices in the east wing.”

The slaves scattered and immediately began talking amongst themselves. Tyatsai found herself shepherded back out through the laundry doors and down the hallway with the half of the line that had been assigned to collect the soiled laundry, a group of fourteen.

As they walked, Tyatsai noticed that the rest of them seemed to semiconsciously divide themselves into smaller groups that chatted amongst themselves. After a few seconds, only she and a boy no more than eleven were the only ones left without a group. She turned and looked down at him and he looked up at her and gave her a charming smile, one she thought would easily woo his future female when he came to the right age.

“Where did you used to work?” he asked, in a voice deeper than it seemed he should have at his age.

“In the kitchen,” Tyatsai replied.

“Why did you get transferred?”

“I have no idea, honestly,” she said, smiling just slightly at the expression of genuine puzzlement on his face.

“And your name is Tyatsai?” When she assented, his eyes widened a little, and he dropped his voice to a whisper. “You tried to escape, didn’t you?”

His innocent question served to effectively wipe the smile off her face. “Oh,” she said drily, “you heard about that.”

“Well, of course,” he said indignantly. “Everyone heard about it. All of the slaves, I mean.”

“Doesn’t it happen often enough?”

His eyes widened again and he shook his head. “I don’t think anyone’s tried in two or three years,” he said, staring up at her in seeming awe of both her bravery and her ignorance.

“You’re joking,” she said, staring back down at him.

“No, I’m not.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but they had reached the east wing corridor, lined on either side with apprentice dormitories, all empty for the day. Tyatsai and the boy followed the rest of the group into one of the dormitories, which had been crowded with as many bunk beds as would possibly fit, all of which were piled with the apprentices’ luggage and other personal belongings. An oversized, overflowing laundry hamper had been squeezed into the extra few feet next to the door. The stench of sweat was nearly overpowering as two of the slaves lifted the hamper and headed back in the direction of the atrium.

None of the other dormitories were any different. All of the slaves came back for second and some for third trips between the laundry before the east wing was laundry-free. Then they moved on to the south wing and the officers’ quarters, each one of which was the same size as a dormitory. But these were furnished instead with four beds and two wardrobes, and a much less crowded laundry hamper.

It took another half an hour to empty the south wing, and when they got back to the laundry, they were assigned to hang up the clean laundry coming out of the steaming vats.

Tyatsai and the boy each grabbed an armload of laundry and headed out into the courtyard, which was empty of all but the group of fourteen. Lines had already been strung in webs and mazes across the courtyard, and each one was dotted with dozens of crude clothespins.

“I’m Norek, by the way,” said the boy as he hung a pair of white trousers on one of the lines.

“How long have you been here?”

“I’ve been at Gavendal for…” The boy squinted into the sun as he thought. “I’ve been here about seven months, I think.” He looked back at her innocently. “And how long have you been here?”

“A little over a month,” she said. “But I’ve been a slave for about twelve years.”

Norek’s eyes widened again, evoking an unexpected laugh from Tyatsai. “What’s funny?” he demanded.

“Nothing,” she said, turning back to the pile of laundry at her feet.

“I don’t think being a slave that long is funny,” he said seriously.

“Well, it’s not.”

“Is that why you tried to escape?”

She glanced sideways at him and he smiled sheepishly.

“I’ve only been a slave for seven months,” he said. “I’ve been at the laundry the whole time. It’s not so bad, really.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Well, it’s not as dull as being in the kitchen, I’ll give you that,” she said.

“What did you do in the kitchen?”

“Scrub floors, wash dishes,” she said, and laughed as he wrinkled his nose in distaste. “And only one person talked to me, and – uh – we didn’t really get along.”

Norek smiled at her. “Well,” he said, in a tone meant to assure that everything was now taken care of, “you have me to talk to now.”

Tyatsai smiled as she hung a shirt on the line.

“I heard something else about you, too,” Norek said after a moment.

“Did you?”

“I heard that you talked back to Enthon at one of the banquets.”

Tyatsai felt her mood darken again. “Two of them, actually,” she said, jerking another shirt from the pile. She was sure his eyes widened at her defiance.

“I think you’re brave,” he said. When she turned around, she found him gazing up at her with deep admiration in his eyes.

“You’re very nice to say so.”

“But it’s true,” he protested.

“Brave and foolish,” she muttered to herself, and to him said, “Maybe so”, and forced another smile.

“My parents were brave like that too,” he said, staring at something beyond the courtyard’s walls. “They never liked being here.”

Tyatsai tried in vain to make out the meaning behind the expression on his face. “Were?” she repeated softly.

“Well, they died a few months after we were brought here,” he said, but there were no tears in his eyes, just deep-seated grief. “But they died because they didn’t let themselves be told what to do.”

They were both silent for a moment, lost in separate thoughts as their hands continued to mechanically hang the dripping laundry on the lines. “My parents died too,” Tyatsai said quietly, “but it was because they gave in, not because they stood up to anything.”

Norek looked up at her, squinting in the sunlight. “You’re not going to give in, are you?” he asked.

She smiled down at him. “No,” she said. “Neither are you.”