We had grown since then, and things had started to change. I had no idea how it happened, but there was an unspoken tension between us now. Glances, blushes, awkward silences. We would snap at each other, frustrated by something we didn't understand. He found excuses to touch me, and I wondered if he had always done that and if I was only now noticing it because of these new feelings. He would become sullen and moody, and resist my attempts to winkle him out of his shell; but still I tried, instead of leaving him to sulk as I used to.
It took me a while, but I eventually admitted it to myself. I was attracted to him. More of my time was spent considering him and his needs than my own. I invented reasons to hug him, making it seem like play. I started to have fantasies about him, and felt vaguely ashamed of them.
But his feelings were harder to read. I interpreted everything he did as possible flirtation. Every innocent comment was picked over for hidden meaning. Every time I thought that I had proof, unequivocal proof that he had similar feelings for me, he would confound me by being suddenly cold and distant. His behaviour had become uncharacteristically erratic, without rhyme or reason. He would seek me out and then seem resentful, as if I was forcing him to be with me. I'd cried myself silently to sleep in my dormitory more than once on account of his cruelty.
That was where we stood, when Master Allet announced we would be fighting each other on the sevenhour of that turn.
The news shook me. Combat training had always been one of the most ruthless and exacting areas of our regime, but while I was good at it I was far from the best in my age group. I was an accomplished meditator, and I outstripped everyone in feats of dexterity, stealth and the mental disciplines associated with spycraft. It was already decided where my talents lay, and I was being steadily narrowed towards them.
But Rynn was a consummate warrior. It was not only his size and strength, both of which were formidable, but his technique. He compensated for his slower speed with an uncanny ability to predict his opponent's next blow, and he had developed a natural fighting style that was quite unique and very effective. Fighting was his talent, and he was relentlessly competitive. He was generally recognised as the best in the Academy, even by the older students, many of whom he had beaten in the past.
When we first began to learn, we were limited to sparring and training with our Masters. But we had outgrown that now. Combat was full-contact, and it hurt like fuck when you lost.
I didn't want to fight Rynn for a lot of reasons, but foremost was that I was afraid of him.
The Masters had a tendency to randomly pull students out to fight each other, but so far we had escaped direct confrontation. Master Allet had come across us arguing in one of the communal glades the turn before. I don't know if he thought he was doing us a favour by letting us work out our aggression on one another, or if he was just being spiteful. Students were forbidden to indulge in relations with the opposite sex. It interfered with their studies, and led to situations just such as this. Master Allet was one of our more unpredictable teachers, whimsical and infuriating at times. I suspected that he had paired us up to see how we would react. He would know in the arena if something was going on between us.
The female students flocked to me at the news. They knew that this was more than just a particularly uneven match-up. Rumours had been flying about us for years.
'You can't go easy on him,' I was advised. 'It'll take everything you've got.'
'It's sick, what they're doing.'
'How could he bring himself to hit you, anyway? What a bastard!'
This was somewhat pre-emptive, I thought, but I let it pass.
'He can't refuse the Masters, though. He'll be thrown out of the Academy.'
'I don't see your problem.' This from Clisa, a particularly level-headed girl, whose advice was rarely welcome because she always spoke sense and usually I just wanted sympathy. 'On the battlefield nobody's going to care if you're a girl. If you can't beat a larger opponent you shouldn't be in the Cadre at all.'
'Shut up, Clisa,' snapped one of my comforters. 'Can't you see she's upset?'
'We're training to be the elite forces of our respective masters,' Clisa replied. 'It's supposed to be tough.'
She leaned in, past the disgusted tuts of the others, and addressed me. 'You know what you need to do, Orna? Think of everything you hate about him. Every time he's made you angry or sad. And then go and kick the shit out of him.'
It was good advice, and I took it. I excused myself from the other students and went to meditate. But I wasn't looking for calm as I sat in the Silent Room of the Academy's main building. I was running chants through my head, basic chua-kin techniques for manipulating emotions. Taking my fury, my frustration, all the confusion and hurt I felt when I was around him, and screwing it up to a hard, bitter point. Teaching myself to be angry. It was a fine balancing act, because rage makes you sloppy, but I nailed it by the sixhour of the turn. Anger can be controlled. It can freeze instead of burning. When I left the Silent Room, I had convinced myself that I really wanted to hurt him.
The arena sat atop an elevated plateau on the floor of the cavern, overlooked by other buildings and gardens on the slope behind. It was little more than a gravelly circle, fringed by a wall of rocks that thrust upward like broken teeth. The stone was heavy with veins of bright minerals, rhodonite and clinoclase and celestine, their surfaces glittering faintly. There were three entrances to the arena, gaps in the rock leading to downward-sloping paths. Lanterns stood on poles to boost the natural light.
The other students ringed the arena, dressed in the plain grey robes of students. Several Masters were here to observe, clad in crimson and wearing the insignias of their station. I spotted Master Allet as I entered: head shaved, nose hooked, face heavily patterned. He was wearing a scowl, as ever.
Rynn was waiting for me. He was six spans high already, and still growing. His body was bulking out fast, and he was much heavier than I was. I was a little over five spans, and the only thing still growing on me were my breasts and hips, neither of which were going to do me much good in a fight.
But I didn't care about any of that. As soon as I laid eyes on him, I wanted to scratch his eyes out. I wanted revenge for the instability he had introduced into my nicely ordered life.
Don't you see what you're doing to me? Are you so stupid? I wanted to shout at him, but I held it back. Saved it. I'd deliver that message in pain.
The combat was unarmed. Later, we'd progress to mock weapons, and later still we would spar with real ones; but for now, it was hand-to-hand. I was faster, he was stronger.
Master Allet brought us to the centre of the arena, and there we faced each other. I could see the uncertainty on Rynn's face. Fighting a girl went against every instinct he had; fighting me was worse. I caught a flicker of shock as he found malice in my gaze. It took him back a little. Good. That was my advantage. But then his own gaze hardened in response, and I saw his pride reassert itself. The only thing worse than fighting a girl was losing to a girl.
'If I suspect either of you are fighting below the very best of your abilities,' Master Allet muttered, 'your training at the Academy will end here. Am I clear?'
'Clear,' we both said at the same time.
'I'll end the match when I see a winner,' he said. He stepped back, and we moved apart after hastily sketched and obligatory gestures of respect. The arena was silent. My senses crackled. I couldn't wait to be at him.
'Begin!'
I attacked in a flurry, hoping to overtake his defences with speed while he was still unsure of me. No good. Though his moves were slower than mine, he flowed backward to match my advance. Somehow my kicks and strikes hit only forearms and shins, and were knocked aside.
I sprung back before he could mount a counter-offensive, but he didn't. He was measuring me, maybe. We circled each other, searching for an opening. I was plotting my next strikes. Strike high and low and wide. Spread them all over so he's forced to move quick to stop them all.
I went in again, flashing a kick at his leg, jabbing at his forehead, turning an elbow towards his ribs. Each attack met only the meaty impact of a blocking limb. Then I felt something like a stone battering ram drive into the side of my face, and I staggered backward, dazzled by the pain. I tripped over my heels and went down in the centre of the arena, scraping the palms of my hands on the gravel.
Voids, I hadn't even seen that punch coming. My vision doubled for a moment then settled down. We were trained to deal with pain, but I was surprised he hadn't knocked me out.
Rynn was hanging back, not pressing the advantage. Letting me recover. I saw Master Allet watching him carefully. Rynn was concerned. He couldn't believe he'd hit me and he was afraid he'd hurt me badly. He never could hide a thing.
I got to my feet, rolling my jaw. He'd pulled that punch. Didn't put his shoulder into it.
I stanced again, ready for the next assault. He'd scored a point on me, but I'd scored a bigger one. He was afraid to hit me, whatever Master Allet's threats. There was my advantage.
We closed on each other again. He was watching me for signs of a lapse in my defenses. I gave him one, trying to lure him in, but he didn't take it. Master Allet coughed pointedly in the background. Rynn glanced at him for a fraction of a second, and I swung an elbow up into his jaw, rocking his head back and clacking his teeth together.
The surprise of the impact gave me a moment to press the attack, and I used it. I punched into a nerve-point on his inner thigh, paralysing his leg, and as he buckled I went for the spot where his shoulder joined his body. It would have put his arm out of commission, but somehow he pulled back, kept his balance, and the strike wasn't hard enough to do any damage. I rolled away as he chopped at me, the hard edge of his hand missing the side of my throat by a whisper.
Then I was back on my feet and we were stanced again, but now his leg was dragging and useless and the odds were stacked in my favour. He was angry. It would make him careless, but it also meant he wouldn't go easy on me again.
He waited for me to come to him. He had no choice but to play it defensively. The most obvious move would be to go for his other leg, but he knew I was smarter than that. So I went for the leg. I feinted at his face, ducked the counterstrike and kicked the side of his good knee, where it was weakest. The connection was solid, and he fell, but as he did I felt one huge hand snatch me around the back of the neck. He bore me down, flinging me to the floor and landing on top of me. His weight drove the breath from my lungs.
I tried to struggle but I couldn't seem to drag any air into my chest. Several moments of scrambling, and then he was over me, fist cocked, aimed at my face. His teeth clenched, eyes wild, ready to put me out.
But he didn't. And that tiny hesitation was all I needed to bring my knee up into his balls with all the force I could muster.
His face went white, eyes bulging, and he crumpled on top of me. I shoved him aside before he suffocated me completely, and he rolled over, curled up like a dying spider, clutching at himself. He wasn't getting up again. The fight was over.
I slowly rose to my feet, surveying the crowd. The boys wore pained expressions; the girls were emitting silent congratulations. Master Allet walked over to me and declared me the winner. I knelt down next to Rynn and put my hand on his shoulder, but he was alone in his private world of agony and didn't acknowledge me.
Probably better he didn't. I couldn't keep the grin down. I was going to be wearing a bruise over the side of my face for a week, but I couldn't stop smiling. Because even when he had me down, even when he was angry and his pride was at stake, he couldn't finish me.
There was only one explanation. Rynn was in love with me.
39
We'd never seen such wonders in all of our ten-year-old lives. I clutched at my best friend Aila and we stared and stared from the back of our wagon, dazzled by the dream we had stumbled into. Our master Chorik was indulgent, laughing and joking about the simplicity of our kind and how it did his heart good to see us lost in admiration at their great land. It proved how much more beautiful it was than the one we had been taken from.
They called it the Silverlight Caves, but the name lost something in the translation. It was a region which, I later learned, was situated just backspin of the Borderlands, a place long treasured by the Gurta until the war swallowed it. The Silverlight Caves had a steep and savage beauty unrivalled by anything I have seen since, but then the bombs and Blackwings and shard-cannons came. Now it only exists in my memory.
The train of wagons was crawling along a bridge of natural stone, a tentacle of scabrock that stretched impossibly across a massive chasm. The bridge was thick with luminous crystal formations, geometric prisms that burst in sprays like flowers. The walls of the cavern were striped with thick veins of some mineral, that reflected light like a silver mirror. Vines of multicoloured lichens hung from the cliffs, and fungi of varieties we had never imagined thrived here. At the bottom of the chasm a river of perfect blue churned and rushed, and giant insects ribboned through the air far below, paddling a dozen wings or more.
The light was white and blinding, and we feared we might lose our sight, but we had to look anyway. Besides, we trusted our masters. The Gurta were wise and they would protect us, their inferiors, like a man might protect his pet. We took comfort in that.
~ Did you ever think we should see something like this? ~ Aila asked, breathless. ~ Ever in our lives? ~
I shook my head. ~ Truly, I am grateful to our masters, for allowing us to behold such magnificence ~
~ Their kindness towards our lowly selves is beyond measure ~
I didn't remember how to speak Eskaran. My life before slavery was a vague and distant place, and I had no desire to return there. My thoughts and words were formed in ritualised Gurtan, shaped by years of harsh and painful teaching. But I accepted that I was ignorant, being of a lowly race, and so I thanked my tutors for their perseverance and apologised for my stupidity and promised to try harder. Languages were a weak point, but I took to their brainwashing like filings to a magnet.
We had been travelling for three turns now. The purpose of our journey had not been explained to us, but rumour among the slaves was that Chorik and several other important Administrators had been summoned by an Elder to help with a thorny supply problem in Dak, one of the mighty frontier cities of the Gurta.
Naturally, Aila and I were thrilled by the prospect. The idea that we would be allowed to meet an Elder was beyond comprehension and we dared not even hope for it. The sight of another great Gurta city would be enough for us. Our masters had a flair for architecture that overwhelmed us, and we were at the age when every new place was an adventure. Every city was wildly unique, further evidence of their superiority. It brought us comfort to know we were in the hands of such a people.
~ We will be stopping soon ~ said our master, from behind us. ~ Make ready ~
We turned back to where Chorik lounged amid the plush interior of the wagon. It was covered with patterned fabric stretched over an elaborate frame, carpeted in fur and strewn with cushions. He and two of his friends, whose professions were unclear but who entertained our master greatly, were lounging on settees laid against the sides of the wagon, drinking wine. We made sure the men's goblets were full before we set about our tasks of preparing evening clothes and perfumes.
Chorik gave me an indulgent swat on the arse as I glided past. I didn't really understand it, but there had been talk of 'duties' I would have to perform when I was older. Chorik had 'appetites'. At first I thought they were talking about cooking, but even at ten I sensed that there was more to it than that. Aila told me not to worry. Whatever it was, it was sure to be for my own good. Didn't I trust our masters?
Of course I did. Unquestioningly. We came to an inn not long afterward. It stood just off the road, commanding a breathtaking view of the chasm, with a roaring waterfall nearby that plunged to the river below. The inn was built of cordwood, stone and ivory from gorth herds. It was circu
lar in shape, all curves and points. A gazebo sat on the cliff edge, amid a small grove which shone eerily with its own luminescence. Bats fluttered between the dwarf mycora and lichen-trees, catching insects that were drawn to the light.
Aila and I scampered off with the other slaves to prepare our masters' rooms while the Gurta men drank and gossiped, and their masked women waited in a cluster nearby, silent. In public, they would not speak unless their husbands spoke to them. I thought them very elegant and dignified.
We made a game of it, as we always did, dividing up the tasks and racing each other to complete them first. Our strict training and our honest desire to please our masters prevented us from cutting corners, but I usually beat her by picking the least time-intensive jobs.
When we were done, the Gurta and their Entwined went to their rooms while we cleaned the interiors of the wagons, swiftly gobbled some food and then fed the chila. Even though I hated the smell of the bad-tempered beasts, we were eager workers, because we knew that soon there would be music, and music was our joy. When we were done, we asked our zaze for permission to get our instruments, and after she had checked our duties were complete we were allowed to take them and scamper to the gazebo.
The gazebo was built around a pool of water, which had to be heated from beneath with coals in the absence of a natural hot spring. Other slaves had already begun the process when we arrived. We picked a spot at the edge of the gazebo that gave us a good view down into the chasm, knelt down and began tuning and plucking our instruments. I played the zhuk, a nine-stringed instrument with a metal fingerboard and a trebly, cooing timbre. Aila played oza, a cube-shaped skin drum. I had been assured that it took many years of practice to truly learn the subtleties of oza, but secretly I thought it was a rather simple instrument.
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