orchestra@wingedharper.com

Skill: beginner

1600 words

Book Outline

1/4: Protag therefore escapes and antag vows to destroy the people and protag, too.

1/2: Because of this, antag recaptures captures protag, and protag realizes that antag's motive is to destroy the people antag hates. Protag recognizes self as key to antag's plans to destroy the people and that protag's narrow definition of "kin" has caused protag to fall right into antag's hands. Protag despairs out of shame and self-blame, and finally realizes that as key to antag's plans, protag must also be key to foiling them.

3/4: In an effort to save them both, protag escapes and despite terrible hardship, finally arrives at hideout of people and gives the warning. Protag and people make plans.

End: Due to protag's knowledge of abilities and limitations of antag, protag and people defeat antag.

Original Story Outline Built on Book Outline:

1/4: Protag becomes a relatively trusted servant, develops skills and knowledge, and in doing so, realizes that antag plans to use protag's knowledge of own people and skills learned serving antag to enslave protag's friends, including her sister, and escapes from antag in order to warn them.

1/2: Protag and sister and friends are captured by antag. Antag states he will torture one after another until helps him defeat people on the outside. Protag realizes that focus on sister cost many people's freedom. Realizes that "kin" includes entire group.

3/4: As protag watches the others tortured one by one, protag thinks, plots, plans and executes escape attempt for them all. Protag and 1 or 2 others escape to the hideout of the others, and sister is among those still imprisoned. Protag feels even more guilt, but this time uses the guilt to spur wiser, better thought out planning.

End: Because of knowledge of antag and good planning, protag is able to lead allies in rescuing all of the captives -- because they are all kin -- and destroying antag.

Extra Credit:

Can loyal, scrappy Klipha save her sister by indenturing herself to Elyor, owner of the city's largest brothel?
 
 
1. Beginning
2. "Scatter!" Klipha flung her arm out, warning her band of urchins.
3. Ignoring them after that gesture, Klipha shoved her younger sister behind a rag heap, yanking the top piece over the younger girl's trembling form. "Quick! Under there!" "Don't move! You're the only family I have left!"
4. Klipha turned from the heap and glanced around, heart pounding, as a burly guard sprinted into the tiny square. She crept behind the vendors' stalls, sidling toward the square's only other exit. Fifty arm lengths, forty... a second, wirier guard joined the first. Klipha eyed the newcomer. Fast looking. His sharp eyes darted around the plaza as Klipha froze against the wall.
5. Ten arm lengths to go. The guard glanced away and Klipha flipped a tan cloak from a display line over her head and shoulders, bent her spine almost double, and hobbled toward the portal. Goddess, hide me!
6. "Thief! Grab her!" The weaver woman. Klipha fled.
7. Suddenly she screamed, tears filling her eyes as her foot whacked against a wine barrel. She hopped wildly on the one good foot, and the cloak slipped away, revealing the remnants of her tattered shift.
8. Goddess, keep Sitha from them and I will do anything!
9. The lean guard seized her wrists, held her writhing against him.
10. "Enough!" The basso voice echoed in the square as the scarlet-clad Master strode toward Klipha, grinning from under his wide hat. He caressed her cheek.
11. Klipha bit him.
12. Guards pulled two of her friends out of hiding. But not Sitha. Not Sitha.
13. Klipha smiled and spat full on his face.
14. He flushed red, then the color faded.
15. He grinned, glanced at the lean guard, and back at her. Glancing around the square, he watched the guards wrestling Klipha's two companions toward them.
16. "These are all you found?"
17. "Yes, Master." Klipha spied three other guards ranging along the vendors' stalls. One was only three short of the heap of nondescript cloths that hid the one person she cared about, the only family she had. I have to stop them.
18. She pulled herself up straight and let her mouth fill with saliva. It took a long time, pulling it out of the ducts with skillful tongue movements, but finally she thought she had enough. She worked it into a mass, ready to send it at him.
19. "One more try at marking me, and I will have this entire square ripped apart. I know full well you have a gang of beggars and thieves working here. I have more... workers... than I really need right now, or I would do so this moment."
20. Klipha blanched. Sitha might hide the guards' casual inspection of the plaza, but a full search...
21. "Forgive me, sir. I have no others in my company, but the townspeople, they deserve their business in peace."
22. He glared at her, wiping at his cheek where the first spittle had caught him, and she thought she read calculating malice in that gaze.
23. "I will go with you if you will leave the townspeople alone."
24. "Go with me?"
25. "Yes."
26. "My willing servant?"
27. She gulped down her fear. "Yes sir."
29. Middle
31. "I will never leave you again, Sitha. We are kin. We are one." She held her sister close through the night, listening to wolves' songs, hearing the squeal of the bats as they darted and hunted under the bright stars. She dozed happily, enjoying the feel of being among her own people.
32. Suddenly someone screamed, the sound cut off mid-cry. A quick, sharp pain in the shoulder startled Klipha awake; she stumbled up from the ground already running, but collapsed to the ground before she had gone four strides.
33. If the drug had knocked her out it might have been easier. She passed the day feet tied to hands under a horse's belly, the saddle fittings wearing raw spots, then blisters, and finally small bleeding wounds in her belly and chest. The blood dripped into her face, too slowly for her to fear for her life, but too quickly to clot and end the tickle, the itch, and eventually the agony of it on her skin.
34. At sunset, the guards untied them from the horses, loaded them into a wagon, and covered them with rankly filthy cloths to enter Marmith through the main gate. None of the prisoners was able to cry out or even to fling a hand out from under the squalid rags. By moonrise, each of Klipha's little band was in a cell. Klipha could see Sitha across the corridor. She fell asleep trying to call to her, to move toward her, to do anything at all beyond breathing.
35. Elyor came down the steep stairs, along the corridor, and stopped in front of Klipha's cell. "I will begin tomorrow. For each day you keep silent, one more will die. It is your choice. You may tell me where the rest are at any time and I will stop the killing." He turned and went back up the stairs, and Klipha had not moved. The drug bound her tighter than any rope.
36. She dreamed. Her companions and she were toddlers. She recognized each one -- Sitha, Klipha, the twins Omri and Omani, clubfooted Werau, simple Brin, curious Chlea. But each face, each small body, blended the features of all.
37. Each had parents who fed and clothed, washed and comforted them.
38. And the parents were identical. At the end of the day, as they went home, each apartment in the warrens of the city were the same. Their beds all stood in the same corners of the rooms, bearing the same battered blankets.
39. Klipha woke with a start, found that she could move, and crept to the door of her cubicle. She could see Sitha's back, her ribs rising and falling slowly in the rhythms of sleep. Omri lying supine on the floor of the cubicle next to Sitha and Omani sprawled beyond him, prone, face barely turned aside far enough to allow breathing. Some snored.
40. The dream filtered into her mind and the images superimposed themselves over the sleeping forms. All of them, so different, yet so alike. Omri would always play jokes and Omani would always laugh first and longest. Sitha would always comfort the younger ones. Klipha thought of each one... so different, one from another, yet so...
41. Similar.
42. So familiar. So like family.
43. Klipha found herself sobbing, face buried in her hands. She had tried to save her sister, and had betrayed all her kin. For kin was not blood. Not parents. Not surname or birthright or moiety. Kin was shared lives, respect, trust, trustworthiness.
44. And Klipha had betrayed their trust.
45. Klipha sobbed more deeply. Elyor was not the problem. He had never pretended to be anything but master, purveyor of flesh. But Klipha... Klipha had asked them to trust her, had led them from the tunnels into the wide place. Into captivity. Into betrayal.
46. Sister against sister. Kin against kin.
47. How she could stop it, she had no idea. But it had lasted long enough.