Branded

by Clare London

  Kiel stayed seated, but I saw him close all the books carefully, resting his arm on the top one of the pile, obscuring the title. He looked up through hooded eyes, watching the interaction between the two soldiers.

  Edrius stared boldly at Zander. “Will you be joining us? The tavern’s opening the doors to its new rooms tonight.” He reached out a hand and rested it lightly on Zander’s hip. We all knew what he meant. Some taverns offered secluded booths, exclusive to the soldiers, where they got the best service and the better quality ales, and could make the most of their precious leisure time with their choice of company. Soldiers who wanted to couple with more privacy or who had tastes that might disturb their fellow men back at the barracks used these places regularly.

  Zander hesitated for a second or two, and he glanced over at Kiel.

  Edrius made a snort of surprise. “You’re finished here, surely? No need to look to some boy slave for permission to leave.”

  “Be quiet,” Zander growled, and Edrius flushed, confused.

  Kiel was back up on his feet, though it only served to emphasize his lack of height compared to the two soldiers. He glared at Edrius. “I’m not a slave. You shouldn’t talk about me like that—”

  “Silence!” Zander snapped at him.

  Kiel glared back. “There’s no need to shout at me. I don’t answer to you, Gold Warrior.”

  Edrius gave a shocked laugh.

  “He answers to me, actually,” I said softly. “The Queen’s orders.” I didn’t know if Zander had heard me, but I held my breath in case I needed to say—or do—more. Edrius glanced at me, his face still flushed. He must have seen and recognized the firm look in my eyes, for he turned away again quickly.

  Zander continued to stare at Kiel. “Like I said, you’re a fool.” His voice was cold and clipped. “You walk into trouble as if you welcome it. You don’t understand what we do. What we are.”

  “You mean I don’t deserve to know, or I shouldn’t be told?” Kiel’s tone was high and angry, his chest heaving. “You mean I’m just a Remainder?”

  “I mean you don’t understand.” Zander’s voice was as sharp as his blade. “That’s what I said, and you will learn to listen.”

  “His behavior’s disgraceful,” Edrius murmured, though he seemed to be enjoying the argument between the other two. “Why do you let him talk so freely?”

  “I don’t know.” Zander still glared at Kiel, but now he was talking about him to Edrius. “I’ve been too lenient. Maen will need to have him disciplined, or I’ll do it for him. His talk is astonishingly tedious, and he’s unable to show the proper respect. But then, he’s only a scribe. It’s amusement for me, to offer him my company.”

  Kiel colored, very deeply. I wanted to step forward to silence him, but he rushed on, answering back regardless. “I don’t need your company.” I could hear the tremor of fear in his voice and see the spark of anger in his eyes, but I hoped for his sake that I was the only one who could. Zander would only take so much confrontation before he struck back. “You can come and go as you please. Do what you like.”

  “I will,” said Zander. “You can be sure I’ll do exactly that.” His expression was strangely twisted. He nudged his shoulder against Edrius’s and lifted his arm, curling his hand around the back of the younger soldier’s neck. He kept looking at Kiel, but he pulled Edrius’s head toward him so they touched. Edrius licked at his lips, moistening them. His hand tightened on Zander’s hip, and his eyelids half closed with sudden desire.

  Zander continued to stare at Kiel, the color of his eyes darkening to something cold and hard. He looked as if he wanted to hurt the young scribe, but he didn’t make any move toward him. Instead, he turned his head to face Edrius. He slid his tongue slowly and deliberately across Edrius’s cheek, and down to his half-open mouth. Zander’s gaze never wavered, still on Kiel, and Kiel glared back at him, eyes widening. Zander caught up the plump skin on Edrius’s lower lip and sucked on it. The Silver Captain groaned with raw pleasure. Zander let out a long breath and smiled, slowly and lasciviously. Kiel continued to stare at him, but his hands clenched at his sides, and by now his face was scarlet with embarrassment at Zander’s public display of intimacy. Edrius pressed in even closer and touched his lips greedily back to Zander’s. His tongue thrust into Zander’s mouth. There was no inhibition or hesitation between them, even in front of watchers. Soldiers were an arrogant, confident, and demanding breed; it was their very nature.

  I was used to such behavior—Kiel probably not. There was a short tense silence.

  Then Edrius broke from Zander’s kiss, laughing breathlessly, his fingers still gripping hard at Zander’s waist. “I’ll wait by the armory,” he said. “The first drink is mine to buy.”

  “No need to wait,” replied Zander, his voice husky. “I’m leaving here now.”

  THERE WERE several moments of silence after Zander and Edrius left. We listened to the sound of their laughter and their boots striding over the cobbles until all noise died away.

  I turned to Kiel. “I’ll ask him to come back to talk to you tomorrow.”

  Kiel shrugged, but he didn’t quite carry off the carelessness. “There are others I can talk to. He doesn’t like the books, I can see that. He seems almost scared of them. Basically, he doesn’t like… me.” He dropped his head, his gaze on the floor.

  “Kiel,” I said, softly. “You said you’d tell me about Mistress Flora. That you’d tell me how you contact her.”

  He sighed and looked back up at me. If he’d been disappointed about the way his meeting with Zander had gone, he was hiding it bravely now. “Thank you, Maen, for standing up for me.” He pushed the books to one side, stacking them carefully, though I saw his hands were shaking. “We’ll go now, shall we?”

  And he walked out of the building in front of me without a backward glance.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “HERE’S THE place,” Kiel whispered. The breeze was irregular, and the temperature becoming much colder. We’d walked out of the city in the last hours of the night. Out here on the heathland it was very dark, with no torches in sight, nor reflection from anything but the pale moon. An unfamiliar bird chirruped in the background, and I could hear the crunching of the short grass under my boots. I crouched now at Kiel’s side, breathing a little more heavily than usual.

  We’d climbed high on the rocks above the walls that encircled the city. It’d been easier to slip away than I imagined, though that was partly due to Kiel’s astonishing knowledge, both of the layout of the Household kitchens and the timing of the Guards at our gates. After we left the Library, he led me through a side gate, under a covered walkway that I’d never even known was there, and across a deserted courtyard to an opening in the wall, a span of a few hundred steps from where Zander and I had found him that night. A neglected creeper covered an opening that might once have been a formal gate, but had obviously dropped into disuse. Kiel put a finger to his lips and held me back for a silent moment. Then, when the Guard was at the farthermost point of their walk, he pushed me through.

  The next hour had been a revelation. Kiel made his way across bare scrubland, then over the rocks of our more distant horizon, and all of it with an unerring sense of direction. I followed like a tame pet, amused at first by his confidence, then surprised by his stamina. At first, I recognized some of the landmarks from my own tortured journey back to the city a year ago, but after half an hour or so, he struck off in a different direction and I was in unknown territory. We finally came to a stop beside a small clump of trees on the edge of rocky heathland. A pile of stones stood as a cairn on the edge of the rock face. To Kiel, it was obviously some kind of beacon.

  To be outside the city again was a strangely shocking experience. The city was no small area, of course. Each Household consisted of a substantial group of buildings, and there were additional communal areas, like the arena, the royal gardens, the public baths, and the Detention Quarters. The Remainders had a settlement too, with qu
arters to live and sleep in, and training rooms where many of them were allocated jobs by the House of Utilities, and where most of them would be assessed by the House of Physic several times during their life for what balance of Devotions they needed. I’d walked and ridden through the many streets of the city, and crossed its courtyards and gardens, and generally found enough space and variety of scenery to take my exercise when I needed.

  But it was nothing like the world outside the walls. The air itself seemed different here, with a sharp taste to it when it whipped across my lips. Tonight the wind was relatively gentle, but I knew how cold it would be before dawn. The atmosphere was damp as if rain threatened, a rare event this season. The ground was hard and the vegetation sparse, stubby, and dark-shadowed in the dim moonlight. Up here on the rocks, the terrain was particularly unforgiving, and from what I could see on the horizon, there was no change for miles ahead. We were all taught in the city how the Queens had colonized the best parts of the planet and made the cities fruitful and commercially successful, and how the rest of the world outside couldn’t sustain robust life. I didn’t know anyone in the Household who’d ever sought life outside the city of their own free will, though I doubt I’d have heard about it, even if they did. The message was that we were secure and supported by our Queen within Aza City, and we needed nothing more than that to live a full and useful life of service to the city. A long time ago—a lifetime, it felt—I’d believed that unquestioningly.

  Now I knew that people lived out here, and not just scraping an existence, but building communities and living with groups of people they cared for and supported: a mix of men and women and… children. We rarely saw those in the city, except on their group outings from the Central School or during tournaments and entertainments. I remembered how Mistress Luana had taunted me before I left her Household with news of the children she’d borne that I’d sired. I knew I’d never see them or take any responsibility for them. Only the Queen kept her daughters by her, until the time of the next battle for Queenship. Everyone else became generic servants of the city, identifiable only by their brand as to what Household they belonged to and who their mother had been. There was never any mark for the father. I knew the ways; I’d lived them.

  But my heart was no longer committed.

  Tonight, the ache inside me was deep and poignant. Some of it was due to the memory of my time with the Exiles, newly fresh in my mind. Some of it was the thought of my life in the city since then: the men I’d worked with, the preparation and experience of the battle, my Mistress’s company, and her ownership of me. Some of it was the disorientation of being outside the city again, for the first time in so long.

  And some of it was true, unmistakable grief. I’d shared the previous visit with another soldier, shared the pain and the torture and the anger and the escape—shared everything with him. Dax. I’d become a different man then, and a better, fiercer, more emotional one. It’d been a confused, tormented, anguished time, but I wouldn’t have changed any of it because that was the way I’d come to realize just how much I wanted him.

  And then I lost him.

  “Will they discover you’re gone?” Kiel kept his voice low, just above a whisper.

  He watched me closely, and I wondered if his question was just a kind way of distracting me.

  I shook my head. I no longer had Zander as a shadow, and Seleste’s preparations for her journey would keep her occupied throughout the night. She’d take a brief sleep and then gather her Ladies and secretaries to her in the morning, then travel with the minimum of soldiers as she was only going across the city. I assumed she wouldn’t call on me at all. It was fortuitous she’d be out of the Household for a few days as it gave me some small measure of freedom.

  “What’ll happen if the Queen finds out that you’ve left the city with me?”

  Kiel seemed genuinely worried.

  “I’ll be punished, I expect. Detention Quarters for a while, or Household arrest at the least.” I glanced at his thin face, white among the pale gray shadows of night. “Whereas you’ll be thrashed, have a few fingers or toes sliced off as a lesson to others, or may even be executed.”

  He swallowed, hard. “That’ll still be better than a few more years in the sewage works,” he said weakly.

  I laughed. It was stimulating, to be free and in this barren place, on this side of the wall. “Don’t worry, Kiel, no need for such courage. I’ll go back when we’re done, and no one will be any the wiser.”

  He smiled at me now, his eyes sparkling in the dim light.

  “Is the camp near here?” I asked. “I’m assuming it’s an Exile camp?”

  Kiel looked around tentatively. “That’s what I believe. But I’ve never actually seen it. I’ve only ever come this far. Usually I meet someone from the camp and we just exchange messages.”

  “How do you know they’re from Mistress Flora?”

  He smiled again, a mischievous grin on his face. “She signs them in a special way that only she has. It’s based on her royal brand, with codes mixed in. Not everyone can read it, but she taught me so I’d recognize it.”

  “You know far more than anyone guesses, Kiel.” I looked at the awareness in his young eyes and wondered what else he knew about the city and his Mistress and all our lives. “Don’t you?”

  He started to answer, but then his eyes suddenly widened and his mouth clamped shut. At the same time, the hairs on the back of my neck rose. I wasn’t fully armed because we’d set off straight from the Library, but I had my dagger in my hand even as the shadows rose up, surrounding us. It was sudden and eerie, the shapes large and distorted in the half darkness, gathering around and above us as we crouched on the ground. My senses told me they were people, not wild animals, but I shuddered at their sudden ambush.

  I was shocked at the fear I felt. I’d been in various combat situations since I joined Seleste’s Household, several times against Exiles or other ragged bands of traveling thieves, and of course I’d fought at the battle for Queenship. But suddenly the raw smell of this unfamiliar earth was in my nostrils and my mind darted back to the time a year ago. I was assailed by memories of harsh, rough bodies manhandling me; the leathery smell of the hides that the Exiles fashioned into ill-fitting clothes; the chill of the cold stone floor where I was thrown. I remembered the injuries I suffered and the strange changes to my body as I’d ceased my Devotions. Of course, the Exiles had planned to kill me from the very first. My fear at that time had been fear of the unknown, of a group of people who seemed to belong to a different world altogether. I’d been afraid of the way my emotions were unbalanced, of all the new and unfamiliar reactions the drugs had previously repressed. And fiercer than any other fear was the one I had for my companion, far greater than any I had for myself.

  “Stand up slowly” came a man’s growl. “Drop your weapons.”

  I laid my dagger on the ground and we straightened up carefully. Kiel held his hands out to the side to show he had nothing for them to attack. “I’ve been here before,” he said. “One of you must know me—”

  The man’s hand lashed out and struck Kiel on the side of the head. Kiel groaned and stumbled back. I caught him and held him against me.

  “A brave response,” I said. “A man like you against an unarmed youngster like him. Your leader must be truly proud of you.”

  “Be quiet!” snapped another voice, a man on the other side of me. My free arm was grabbed and pulled behind my back. Kiel was wrenched out of my hold and his arms pinioned behind his back in the same way. “Maen,” he gasped, but the first man twisted his grip and the young scribe moaned in pain.

  “Leave him be!” I shouted. They were both well-built men, and the shadows of others behind them alerted me we were outnumbered. But from their stance and the clumsy way they restrained me, they weren’t city-trained soldiers. I was more than a match for these two, even unarmed. I only had to tense my limbs and I’d be able to break free from my captor, turn so as to bring him down to the
ground, and then reach back over to Kiel’s man—

  “Maen?” The shocked gasp from the back of the group made me pause. “Stand aside, Brod, Karil! Who have you got there?” It was a woman’s voice, and a familiar one. The man holding me didn’t let go, but stepped to one side. The speaker came into view, pushing through the other watchers to the front. “For freedom’s sake,” she said. “It is you. I never dreamed you’d come back.”

  “Mistress Eila.” I acknowledged her, gritting my teeth. “Is this how you deal with all your messengers?”

  She looked between Kiel and me and waved a hand. “Let them both go, but keep an eye on the Warrior. This could still be a trap.”

  I pulled my arms from her heavy-handed soldier’s grasp, and beckoned for Kiel to come and stand by me. His eyes were still large, though with things other than fear. He glanced between the woman and me, confused.

  “So who’s the messenger?” she said. “I can’t imagine a Gold Warrior has turned traitor to the Queen.” Her voice was as firm and deep as I remembered, her features as strong, and her hair dark and thick, though she looked much older. It had only been a year, though I knew life outside the city took a harsher toll.

  Another young man appeared from the side of the group, gesturing at Kiel. “He’s the one, Eila. I’ve delivered messages to him before now on behalf of your visitor. She sends me up here with her papers, and he’s meant to come out and meet me on every third night.”

  She looked again at Kiel, though she seemed disinterested. “Just a boy. A rat.”

  His mouth opened wide, ready to snap an indignant reply, but I gripped his arm tightly to dissuade him. “Let him go, then. I’ll stay as guarantee, whatever you want. Let him run back into his hole, he’s of no interest to you.” I pushed Kiel away to the side and tensed, ready for a battle, but I was startled by Eila’s laughter.