The Flight Stories
Background Summary
Amel ends his short career as a courtier when he steals his baby half-brother, Erien, from their sadistic mother, Ev'rel. Once he has left the baby in safe hands, he faces the problem of how to hide from Ev'rel. He dares not rely on friends because Ev'rel is the second most powerful Sevolite in the empire and she knows who his friends are. He must stay away, to protect them. So he takes flight.
The empire is vast. There ought to be a way to hide in it. But Amel is not just anyone. Born to rule the empire, lost in infancy, raised as a commoner and rediscovered at the age of sixteen working as a courtesan, his story has made him famous. Worst of all, for a fugitive, is Amel's other-worldly beauty that gets him noticed even by people who have never seen his pictures -- and his warm heart that cannot help but notice others.
Part I: Hiding Low
Installment 3 (March 2007)
Amel’s grab was too late. His odd visitor snatched up the face cloth and yelped as the acid stung her. She flung the cloth away on reflex and it sailed towards the surprised stevedore who had followed her in to interrogate her. Acting equally on instinct, Amel body blocked the man out of the way of the smoking cloth. They went down in a hail of shrieks from the girl and curses from the docks worker.
“Don’t kill him! Don’t kill him!” the girl yelled with her fists pressed into her round cheeks on either side of her face and her eyes as big as saucers.
Amel knew which ‘him’ she meant thanks to Gelack pronouns but the stevedore seemed more inclined to kill him than the other way around. Having failed to recognize a flung face cloth as a grievous threat, the man appeared to have taken Amel’s intervention as an invitation to brawl. Amel took a clip to the side of the head that made his ears ring before he managed to dance clear, still rock steady despite the blow and just a bit disheveled with a stinging flush of pain centered on one cheekbone.
“Stop!” Amel cried, holding up both palms towards his angry assailant from as great a distance as the little room allowed under the circumstances. “The face cloth,” he babbled, veering between truth and plausibility. “It was for – cleaning equipment. Not faces. It would have burned you.”
The girl calmed down immediately and cocked an eye in the direction of the cloth where it lay gently fuming on the room’s metallic floor.
“You’re just another crazy actor!” the man snarled at Amel, his nostrils pinching at the faint, distinctive odor of acid wafting up from the cloth near his right boot. His pronoun busted Amel back to commoner. “Have her then!” he said, with a glare at the girl who was studying the cloth with a thoughtful air. “You lying, stealing vermin deserve each other! But you give me back that key you took, Harli Quinn!” He concluded, pointing a thick finger accusingly. “Or I’ll snap your little boyfriend here in half and beat you senseless!”
“Oh, right,” she said, snatching her attention from the fuming cloth long enough to flourish the key and toss it to him with a toothy grin. “Sorry about that.”
“Sorry you got caught you mean,” he grumbled at her. “And there had better not be anything missing from that store room when I’ve done inventory, girlie.”
Harli Quinn grinned even more widely and sweetly and shrugged a shoulder in as innocent a manner as any clown had ever contrived to feign one. But to Amel’s immense relief, the stevedore accepted the gesture with a grumble and went off with his key clutched in one big hand.
The second the door was closed on him the girl, Harli Quinn, rounded on Amel and said, in commoner-peerage, “So, why were you going to mar a face that beautiful with acid, brother?” And winked at him knowingly.
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