She smiled, though there was no one there to see it. A shadow in the night, this was where she felt at home. Alone. Above the seething ranks of humanity. With power over others. This was why she knew she would be part of the Syndicate.
Absentmindedly, she listened to the rioters in Kingshold. Who knew what their concerns were? And why would she care? They had business tonight, and so did she.
Creeping along the slate roof she peered into a protruding attic window, the glass laced with lead. She saw a young woman sleeping—Qeturah—doing what many would have suggested she should be doing too. Getting a good night’s rest before the day to come.
Qeturah was not the target of her mission though. Merely a navigation point. Two more windows down.
She cupped her eyes, shielding the glare of the bonfires from the dappled glass, as she inspected the room beyond. Another sleeping figure.
Fin slid a thin length of metal silently through a gap in the window frame and flipped the latch. Security was not exactly top of mind for the Hollow House—who would be stupid enough to burgle a nest of vipers?
She climbed into the small cell and perched on the stone window ledge, regarding the sleeping figure. He faced the wall, but she could see his chest rising and falling as he breathed. She wondered whether he dreamed. Did he imagine himself victorious tomorrow? Inducted into the Syndicate and a new family that would look past his scarred face and appreciate him for his black heart alone.
Hah!
Dorien turned in his sleep at the slight sound of her laugh but did not wake. Finabria coughed. “Ahem.”
Now the young man awoke. Like a triggered mousetrap he sprang into a crouch on the bed, a dagger, glinting in the moonlight, appearing from beneath a pillow. Fin did not move.
“Don’t worry, Dorien,” she said. “I’m not here for a fight.”
“Who are you? What do you want?” he asked. His voice was deep and smooth, like a well of crisp clean water. Dorien was shirtless, wearing only breeches that bunched up around his groin as he squatted. She could only see the contours of his body, the shape of his broad shoulders and muscled legs. The voice. The body. Fin was sure Dorien would have been quite the favorite of the girls if it wasn’t for his face.
“It’s Finabria. I just wanted to talk, and didn’t know who else would understand. Understand what it was like to be so… lonely.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know,” said Fin, as she unbuttoned the mask and pulled it from her face. “We could die tomorrow. This could be my last night. It seems so… pointless. Spending it sleeping.”
Fin slid off the ledge and stalked across the room to his bed. Dorien backed up against the wall like a frightened child. Fin knew that Dorien had been excused from the love-craft classes that began at the age of fourteen after the first lesson—his classmates refusing to engage in practical study with him because of his face. She wondered whether that rejection had scarred his heart more than the acid had his face.
“Why are you here?” he stammered.
“I told you, Dorien. The others, they don’t understand. They don’t know what it means to be dedicated to succeeding like you and me. I’ve seen you watching me, Dorien. And I’ve watched you. I see you on the training ground first and leaving last. I see you in the library, studying, when others are socializing. I see the freedom that having no friends gives you and I'm… jealous.” She touched his arm, the hairs tickling her palm. He looked into her eyes, and she saw those of a frightened dog. Up close she could see his face—the left side devoid of eyebrow, eye lidless and watery above a cheek that was rippled with deep scars down to the jaw line. She did not flinch.
He reached out to touch her, a hunger in his eyes, before he drew back. “I don't know what to do,” he said.
“Don't worry,” said Finabria, as she leaned in to kiss him. “I can show you.”
She had remained for a little while after their coupling. At first it had been tentative, but then urgent and it had not taken long before they were both finished. Dorien had fallen asleep holding her, whispering Tigran love poems. Who knew he would be such a romantic?
Once she was sure he was asleep she slipped out the way she had come and back to her own bed.
It was late. By her reckoning only a couple of hours until dawn. The riot still raged. But her bed called.
Slipping naked between the sheets, she was asleep before her head hit the pillow. She dreamed of the trial. Four young men and women battling, blood spilling onto the cobblestones. But she wasn't one of them. She watched the contest from an elevated vantage. Finabria stood where Lady Chalice had been earlier that day, watching while her students gave their all to be part of her house.
“That’s quite a plate of food you have there, Fin,” said Tom, apparently unaware of his repetitiveness. Another example of why she needed to be rid of these idiots and their grating small talk.
Fin looked down at the wooden tray, laden with gloriously brown sausages and beans cooked in a tomato sauce, and decided to play along. “I’m hungry.”
“I don’t know how you can eat,” he said. “If I was you, I would be shitting bricks this morning.”
“Didn’t get much sleep. Need to eat.”
“Have you noticed that there aren’t any other trialists here?” asked Jilesa.
Fin looked around. She was surprised to find it was true. She hadn’t noticed that before. In fact she hadn’t really noticed anything other than how the sausages tasted so delightfully of hot fat (and not much else), occupied as she was with filling her belly and thinking about how she wasn’t sure what to do about Argo. Now she noticed that she really was the only trialist there. Had they all slept in? She hadn’t even considered that might have been allowed. And some additional sleep would have been welcome given her nocturnal activities.
She also noticed that everyone in the dining room was looking at her.
“Huh,” she said. “They must be too soft to get out of bed. They’ll still be sleepy by this afternoon.” Fin grinned a toothy, pork smeared smile.
“Fin,” said Jilesa, “I hope you win.” Her friend looked earnest. Caring even.
It made Fin vomit a little inside her mouth.
Then the call was taken up by the other students chewing at their breakfast.
“Go on, Fin, you can do it!”
“You’re one of us.”
“Show ‘em what you can do!”
What was this show of camaraderie? Half of these kids had never spoken to her in the past. What did she care about what some snot-nosed first-year thought of her chances?
Her breakfast thoroughly spoiled, Fin pushed the tray away from her and fixed her friend with a cold stare. “Thanks,” she said, the sarcasm dripping like the fat from the unfinished sausages.
Fin swung her leg over the bench and, eyes fixed on the doorway, she departed the room, calls of encouragement echoing around her.
She wasn’t doing this for anyone but herself.
Why were the other students supporting her? And why should she care what they thought one way or the other?
Fin reflected on why it bothered her as she entered the courtyard, morning sparring drills starting for those already finished with breakfast. If they had laughed at her, sneering at her chances, she would have shrugged it off as them not knowing their arse from their elbow and moved on.
But their support troubled her. She wasn’t a champion. She wasn’t an example to others. And she sure as hell wasn’t a martyr.
The day was gloomy, a mist or a fog, or even smoke from the riot of the night before—she wasn't sure which—hung in the air. Fin walked briskly across the courtyard, paying half attention to the students pairing off for sparring practice. She usually liked nothing more than starting her day with a little action, but today she had a mind to skip it and conserve her energy. She snapped to attention at the voice of one person talking with the drill instructor.
“I haven’t got a partner today, sir. Argo is saving his en
ergy for this afternoon.”
It was Barrag, Argo’s shadow from yesterday. The boy she recognized as his usual sparring partner.
“I’ll fight him, Master Laith,” she said without thinking.
“Are you sure you don’t want to shadow train, Miss Finabria?” said Master Laith. “Or are you hoping to get yourself injured?” The old bastard chuckled to himself. Fin ignored it.
“I’m good thanks,” she said as she walked on to the training ground in front of Barrag. “So, what’s your choice of weapon?”
Barrag looked momentarily taken aback, but he glanced up to the building high behind her and then grinned. “Saber,” he replied, picking up a blunted curved length of steel.
Fin nodded. “Daggers for me,” she said, picking up a pair of similarly blunted training weapons. She tapped them together, a ringing sound echoing across the courtyard as she took an open fighting stance. The other training partners stopped what they were doing to watch the trialist in an unexpected show.
Barrag had a reputation as being good with a blade. Almost as good as Argo—that was why they sparred together daily. And so Fin was not surprised when Barrag leapt forward, beginning a series of rapid slashes at her legs and arms. Each blow she deflected with a dagger. And with each blow she took a step backward, ceding ground.
As she neared the wall of the courtyard the crowd parted to give the fighters room. Barrag, sensing a quick finish, lunged at her torso.
Fin rolled away, coming to her feet as Barrag turned and came at her again. This time she was on the front foot and closed with a series of slashes at his upper body. He was quick. Sliding away from a blow, or parrying it on his saber, he fended off her attack. But something stood out to her, in the way he moved, that was… strange.
After each of her strikes, his hands dropped. Like he was expecting a low attack after a high. Each time he recovered, but only just in time.
Barrag took advantage of a split second’s hesitation from Fin and pushed forward again. Thrust and then parry her follow up strike. Thrust and parry. Fin danced to the side, watching her opponent’s eyes.
He practically sent a herald, trumpets blaring, before he slashed high at her neck, normally off limits for sparring, as even with blunted blades it was possible to kill with head blows. Fin swung back at the hips, the saber sweeping past where she was moments before, so close she felt the displacement of the air on her wide eyes. Dodging the blow, she slipped in close.
Again he dodged. And again she noticed him move to pre-empt an expected low attack.
It came to her then. It was not just expected. It had been trained into him. Like a dog expects a treat after a trick. Too many times only training with the same opponent…
She struck low and he parried the blade across her body, tying up her arms and allowing him to flick the sabre forward and jab into her chest. It hurt. She could tell there would be a peach of a bruise. Maybe even blood. Fin fell on her backside in the gravel.
There was an audible “ohhhh” from around her as the crowd collectively exhaled, disappointment that she had been bested so early in the day, and not even by a trialist. Barrag meanwhile looked like he had caught the greased pig.
Fin got to her feet. This had been useful. It had taken a few moments but her brain caught up to why her mouth had gotten her into this trouble. She reached out and shook Barrag’s hand stiffly.
“Well fought.”
Fin threw down the daggers in mock outrage and marched out of the courtyard, all eyes on her for the second time that day.
It was times like these that she missed her home. Her father’s house on the grand canal of Ioth was one of the grandest palaces not owned by the ruling merchants. It had four enclosed gardens; a spectrum of aromatic flowers arranged in geometric shapes, walkways, benches and other quiet secluded spots which had been havens for thinking and planning, even at a young age.
The Hollow House garden by contrast was small, singular and green. Herbs used by the kitchen flourished in pots. Ivy crept up the walls. And a square of grass lawn, maintained at a house-mandated three inches in length by men with scissors (she knew because she had seen them with said implement and a measuring stick).
It was on this lawn that she lay. Arms and legs akimbo, a human starfish in a sea of green. Fin looked at the sky, or least where the sky would normally be if it wasn’t for the unending grey. The disappearance of summer was hardly an encouraging portent for her fate.
But Fin did not move.
The ground felt good beneath her body. The grasses cradled her. She imagined thousands of tiny green hands holding her a sliver above the ground. It was lunchtime but Fin had no desire to see her fellow students. She did not need their unwanted support. Just the comforting feel of the lawn and the memories of her father, as she contemplated her completed work.
People loved routine. Their actions recurring in a circle of inevitable regularity, whether they realized it or not. Her father had taught her this lesson. He was a powerful and successful merchant, but he was also a feared player of card games, and he ascribed his success not to mathematical prowess, but his ability to study people. Business and cards were two different forms of the same game to him, and his opponents fell into categories of people that he had been refining his whole life.
Finabria remembered afternoons sitting in the piazza with her father, watching the great and good go about their business, and he would point and whisper in her ear his prediction for what they would do next— “he’s buying flowers for his mistress, not his wife”, “he’s walking quickly because he needs a glass of wine to stop the tremors”, “look at him there, he looks well-to-do but he is going to steal that woman’s coin purse”. Her father’s ability to predict the future had been like magic to her younger self.
Before she came to Kingshold, her father had sat her down and shared his secrets with her, though he warned her not to blindly trust his learnings, but instead to develop her own approach. Just remember three things he had said, “the sun will rise, the days will turn, and people can’t help betraying themselves.”
Her future success was reliant on this fact. Her life potentially relied on this. She breathed deeply and trusted that this lesson was true.
The square courtyard was empty save for Finabria, her three fellow trialists, and four chests positioned at the points of a smaller square—scratched into the center of what would pass for the arena. Every window lining the courtyard was flung open, her fellow students hanging out and jostling for a good view. On the balcony where yesterday had stood just Lady Chalice and Master Steppen, were the other full Syndicate members currently in residence at the Hollow House.
Fin stood in one corner. In the corner to her right was Dorien, who stared intently at her. She flashed him a brief smile and let her gaze roam. In the opposite corner was Argo, standing tall and looking maddeningly confident. In the corner to her left was Qeturah, and as usual her pale face showed that she had recently applied powder. Fin breathed a sigh of relief. Wearing make-up for a fight was inconceivable to Fin, but Qeturah was nothing if not predictable.
Which was good, as Fin had rested her hopes on the predictability of her competition.
Fin focused her attention on Qeturah, who swayed slightly instead of standing at the ready. Fin could see how her eyes seemed slightly unfocused.
Another thing that was predictable were the effects of desiccated greeber slug when applied to the skin. Drowsiness. Lethargy. Delayed reflexes. Fin almost laughed at the ease of the small victory.
She noticed that Dorien had been looking at Qeturah too. Would he see what she had done? If you didn’t know what to look for then it would not be obvious that the other girl had been drugged…
A loud clap bounced off the courtyard walls, and the murmuring from the windows stopped. Finabria turned to face Steppen, who clapped once more.
“Trialists,” began Lady Chalice, “there is one place in the Syndicate and there are four of you. In each chest is a weapon, and o
n each chest is a lock. Last one standing wins. Try not to kill each other.” Without further ceremony Chalice rang a small glass bell and the trial began.
Fin wanted the diamond chest, where she expected the sai to wait within. The bell rang and she set off at a sprint to the chest in front of Dorien. He was moving toward the same destination, but instead of stopping at the diamond chest he leapt over it and continued his run.
Dorien was heading for Qeturah. He must have noticed her looking slightly dazed too.
She reached the chest and examined it. It was the same size as the other boxes, inlaid with stained and polished wood in a herringbone pattern, the pattern interrupted in the center of each panel to contain a diamond shaped piece of lacquered black wood. But it was without any obvious locking mechanism.
A puzzle box. Not what she had been hoping for, but she could do this. She knew she could.
Fin dropped her lock picking tools to the earth—they wouldn’t be useful now—and slowly swept her hands over every surface of the chest, with the gentleness of a lover’s caress.
As her hands felt for seams, tell-tale changes in the solidity of the panels, she assessed the battlefield. Argo, now to her right, was on his knees working at the chest in front of him, peering into a lock as he probed it with his tools.
Across the courtyard, Dorien had engaged Qeturah in hand to hand combat over a chest decorated with squares in a checkerboard. Qeturah dodged his leap and downward punch as Dorien jumped over the chest and skidded to a halt in the sand. Qeturah turned, swinging a roundhouse kick at Dorien’s head, but it was too slow and he blocked it easily, catching her ankle in one hand. He stepped inside her leg and brought his elbow down on the kneecap—it popped audibly and Qeturah squealed. He released his grip on her foot, letting it drop. Qeturah, unthinking, bent over to touch her wounded leg. Dorien thrust a straight arm punch into her exposed temple and she crumpled to the floor. One down.
Tales of Kingshold Page 18
