Iris's Guardian

by Lisa Daniels

  Had she misjudged him?

  The fight began. Brann prowled around the champion, and the crowd openly cheered for Ozun, who bathed in their adoration with smiles and lifted his hand. Brann didn’t take the opportunity. Elise suspected he was right to not do so, since Ozun’s body remained as taut as a wire. Prepared for ambush.

  Likely it would be considered dishonorable or something if Brann launched himself before his opponent anticipated it. Elise didn’t know much about fighting, but saw that both fighters clearly held experience, because they both stalked around each other with power and respect.

  They did nothing else for a few moments, sizing one another up. Feet tapping the cage floor. The audience began baying for action, for them to stop their little dance and head straight for first blood.

  Ozun made his move. A feint, a step forward. The fighting sport focused on blocking blows with the knees and elbows and hands. Full contact with the body meant points for the assailant. Elise learned that from the short time she spent watching it. Every move had a pattern to it, and she saw patterns repeated in matches, like the fighters only had a select sequence of moves to perform from.

  Elise wanted to ask if the sport had a name, but refrained. It likely did, with such an art form to it. Something about the thirst for blood, the crescendo for action and reaction. Tarken utterly focused on Brann's movements. Any breaking of that focus would risk his displeasure. No. She was best silent.

  Watching Brann fight helped draw her closer to him, admiring the power contained in his limbs. She even visualized being down there, taking and receiving the blows. Dancing in that mesmerizing rhythm, reading her opponent's moves. He conducted himself with energy, determination and diligence. Ozun might be stronger, but Brann moved fluidly. Bobbing and weaving around the giant wyrm.

  Clack! Their hands smacked together. Brann’s other fist sank into Ozun’s flesh. A point for him. The crowd understood the fight more than Elise. Jeers and shouts of support rang through the stands. More jeered against Brann, because most had bet against him.

  She heard Tarken laugh beside her. As if he knew Brann was winning.

  Was he? The fight still looked even, with neither side gaining an advantage. She assumed points had to do with contact against flesh, but they might be rated on other means as well. She scrunched her brow, trying to see what Tarken did.

  A few blows later, it became obvious. Ozun flagged in his movements, his swings becoming wilder. Brann ducked, avoiding a punch, before rolling out of a kick and deflecting it with his shin guard. Ozun tottered off balance, and Brann swept his legs out from under him, landing a flurry of blows in succession. Not going for damage. Just points. A less honorable person might have inflicted serious damage, crippling or killing their opponent. Brann tapped for points like a buzzing fly against the skin of a bull.

  Ozun yielded, and the crowd started booing.

  “What a pity,” Tarken said, smirking. He clapped his hands together in delight. Elise didn’t understand the boos. Brann had won that fair and square. He did nothing wrong. Yet the crowd, upset that their champion had lost, no matter how good the opponent was, acted bitterly disappointed, choosing instead to belittle the winner.

  The ones who bet on Brann winning, however, left the stands with big smiles.

  “He had eight to one odds. Ozun was two to one,” Tarken informed Elise, noting how her gaze followed the cheerful members of the crowd. She nodded, though she didn't respond with words. Best not to sour Tarken's mood with a human voice. After that, Tarken left to collect his winnings. Brann went over to Elise, sweat pouring down his muscular, bulked-out body. He looked every inch a warrior.

  “Well? What did you think?” He moved to the side to avoid Karris as she walked past, not bothering to look in Elise's direction. “Did you like the fight?” His gray eyes locked with hers as if her opinion mattered. Elise's cheeks flushed slightly, and she began to scratch at her wrist. Her current servant clothes itched her skin and fit too tight.

  “You fought beautifully!” Elise then shrugged. “Not that I fully understand the rules. You just seemed... graceful, somehow.” Graceful for someone of his stature, tall and fleshed out. Sure, he wasn't built like a hunk of meat and muscle like Ozun, but he still towered above most other people. Ozun just made everyone tiny in comparison.

  “Interesting. You'll find the others here will think I won by trickery and luck. For them, a true victory is beating someone black and blue, maybe crushing a bone or three. They won't like that I won technically. It's what they call cowardly.”

  “It's what I call smart,” Elise said, matching his little smile. “Though I think it's a shame others don't see that. You deserve the win.”

  He preened himself slightly. Smokes, he did look endearing with that kind of expression. Not cute, not handsome, exactly... but it gave a beatific shine to his features. It made him stand out in a sea of faces. Even the mangled scar on his chin became softer, somehow. Just a pattern etched into his beard, bumps of flesh that spoke of past battles.

  A servant came rushing back to Elise to tell her that Tarken would likely be a while. She should make her way out with Brann. Elise thanked him and he darted back to Tarken, desperate to get back and not crash into anyone.

  “Well, milady. Your abode awaits. And I could sleep for a week right now. After bathing all night.”

  He held out an arm to her and they interlinked elbows together. He escorted her back to her chambers. All the events of the evening left Elise a little disjointed. So much had happened. Leaving the mines. Singing. Watching people fight, learning snippets about the new world she found herself in. How bizarre, when she used to live two hundred meters away, to know the vast difference in their lives. A life dying of lungdust in the mines, or a life of Lastday entertainment in the basement, and the pressure of being a good servant.

  Isera used to visit her three, four times a week. Sometimes the servant worked in the mines to avoid suspicion, since she wasn't supposed to leave the estate. Isera described the mines as a pit of horror, where people went to die.

  Elise agreed. The mines did have that oppressive despair to them. Past the canaries and the banging of axes and the creak of wheelbarrows, she imagined monsters lurking in the shadows, ready to grab unsuspecting workers.

  Why worry about monsters in the caves when the wyrms helped fuel nightmares with their actions anyway?

  Both of them saw once a man have the life beaten from him when he dropped a candle onto the floor. The wyrm even thought the man faked his comatose state, and kicked him while he lay still.

  Fortunately for humans, the wyrms hadn't yet figured out a way to flog a corpse back to life. Eternal suffering – not something anyone wanted. Not something anyone deserved.

  Brann came with her into the room and shut the door. Fear stabbed through Elise. She thought he planned to leave her alone, go back to his quarters. What if he expected sex from her? To use her in the equally heinous way the wyrms did when they sentenced her to slave labor in the mines? A sense of disappointment tangled with the fear. Somehow, a part of her hoped him to be different. Someone who didn't intend to inflict suffering upon another. She squeezed her eyes shut as he reached for something by his side. A weapon? Not that he needed one. With those muscles, that strength packed inside his body, he could knock her out in an eye blink.

  A finger tapped her shoulder. “You okay? I have a drink here. I suspect you're dehydrated.”

  She cracked her eyelids open to see him holding a flask. She stared at it for a moment, uncomprehending. He waved it in front of her face. “If you don't want it, I'm finishing it off.” When she didn't move, he then sighed. “It’s not poison. It’s something that helps relax. I have no interest in poisoning such a delightful singer…”

  Finally, Elise took the flask. He watched as she drank from it. The flavor burned her throat. Alcohol? Really? She coughed and he grinned.

  “You could have told me that was alcohol beforehand!”

  “We
ll, best I leave that a happy surprise.”

  “You know alcohol might be classed as poison, right?” Elise wanted to swallow her words the second she said them, stuff them somewhere where they could be forgotten. Back-talking a wyrm was suicide.

  Brann, a drake, didn't seem to mind.

  “Also as a relaxant,” he pointed out. “So, tell me, little one. How did you have such a good singing voice?”

  Elise shrugged, taking another gulp. She didn’t know herself. It just happened for her, without ever needing to think about it. Like magic.

  “I’ve always been able to sing.” She left it at that. It was true. It didn't require great thinking on her part. She didn't train for hours and hours until her throat bled and her lungs expired desperate gasps of breath. It just happened.

  “And how does it make you feel, little one? How does the singing feel to you?” He folded his arms. Despite the ugly scar, he seemed kind. Warm. Elise felt her interest lean into him, wanting to bathe in more of his presence. With his height, he might be scary, but with his manner, he invoked an air of protectiveness. Not that she needed protecting. No one could protect her. Not really.

  How did it make her feel? Happy. Sad. Powerful. It started as a feeling in her chest which spread to her voice-box. It made her blood tingle, and sometimes, if she felt a strong emotion, she could push it out of her. Or bring it back inside, if she was empty and hungry.

  Was there an ulterior motive to his questions? It did feel like he was probing around at something, but Elise didn't understand what.

  “Like I can do anything,” Elise eventually said. She didn’t know Brann’s motives. The drake seemed to be Tarken’s pet in a way, his special sponsor – except the drake didn’t act like a pet. Elise’s eyes glanced over to where Isera’s name was burnt. Isera had been forced to work in the mines a few times when visiting Elise, to avoid getting into trouble with the guards, who thankfully couldn’t tell the difference between the humans that worked there before and the ones in the mansion.

  Isera never mentioned the basement. Was that new? Or did she never get to see what happened under there?

  Elise suspected it was more to do with the fact that Isera didn't think it important to mention to a mine dweller. What use did someone like Elise have for something like that anyway?

  “I advise you to be careful, Elise,” Brann said. He took the flask from her after she gulped down some more, and finished it off himself. “Don’t sing unless you have permission to. Don’t entertain servants. You probably shouldn’t sing in front of Karris alone, either; she’s a jealous soul. The reason for this is that some malcontent wyrms might think your singing is magical.”

  Elise gaped. Her mouth became dry. “It’s just singing.”

  Brann regarded her for a long moment before he stepped forward and whispered in her ear, “No, it isn’t. Elise. Be careful. You have a power in that voice. True power.”

  “I don’t understand?” Elise’s heart thumped painfully. Her blood zinged through every limb like scattered cave dust. She had heard of magic existing before. Especially when she had that talk with Isera, who said she believed magic was returning to the world. Isera held some fantastical ideas, including that the lost powers which had made humans fall from grace now circulated, finding a way back into their population.

  In no uncertain terms, Isera hinted that it would be cool if Elise had magic powers. If her blood held a part of magic's revival in it. Isera had been holding something back then. Something that made Elise wonder how she knew for certain that magic was coming back.

  It left her imagination wild, searching for signs of power, in herself and in Isera. She thought... maybe sometimes she wondered if her singing had something more, but she also considered it as wishful thinking on her part.

  All she did was sing.

  Elise’s brain spun, dizzy from remembering that conversation.

  Brann took the near empty flask from her. “I think you know what I mean. Perhaps you wonder if your voice has a touch of magic or not, Elise,” Brann said, briefly stroking a hand through her blonde hair, nails brushing her scalp. “And I'm inclined to think it might.”

  Elise backed away from him, removing his fingers from her hair. “I, I don't know what you're talking about. M–magic?”

  “Oh, please. I don’t think it’s something to kill you over. We all need a little song to lift our moods. And perhaps that is your talent. To make us feel what you feel.”

  Elise crinkled her lips. “It's not magic. It's just singing.” She doubted her own words. The hope blossomed within her again, wanting it to be possible. Wanting magic to exist in her. Brann persisted in this vein as well, believing the same suspicion Isera once voiced. Elise didn’t sense that Brann intended to use his suspicion as blackmail, however. On the contrary, he seemed… concerned.

  Elise liked the idea of being able to let people feel what she felt. That was the mark of good music. Any decent musician conveyed such emotion. But to have it as magic? Nonsensical and pointless. It might as well not be a power at all, but still better than nothing. Though Elise suspected it did hold a touch of something more. In the way her veins vibrated. In the way she tangled her blood and soul into the words, and felt empty or full afterwards. And in the way people never seemed to… hate her.

  As if her voice calmed them.

  Maybe to be a good singer, you needed magic. That made more sense to Elise.

  She kept that idea inside, though it exploded over her brain in cold realization, leaving fragments of hope lodged in her brain.

  Just imagine if that was the truth. What if she had never experienced wyrm violence personally because her voice soothed them?

  She couldn’t prove that. She might just be lucky instead. She did notice that wyrms were softer with her than with any other human. Not once had Elise been whipped, been raped, been truly hurt.

  No one could be that lucky, surely?

  “Good night, Elise. Tomorrow, if you’re interested, I can train you a little in the art of Makido. That’s the fighting style the matches use,” he supplied. Not knowing what else to say, Elise nodded, a lump in her throat. Brann patted her on the shoulder, his scarred face kind. Elise traveled past the scars and saw an inner beauty there. He wasn’t breathtakingly handsome. But he had a twinkle to those gray eyes, a nice jaw structure, high cheekbones and symmetrical features, aside from the ruined flesh that split his red beard in two. The kind that made you stop and look again, and wonder how he managed to occupy more space than what his body occupied, as if an aura around him swelled up and consumed the atmosphere in a room.

  He left and Elise stared at the door for a few moments, biting her lip. Chewing the flesh there. Wondering why Brann acted so kind.

  She concluded one thing from her interactions. Drakes were completely different. Not just with their dragon forms – but with their personalities. Their souls. They knew how to be kind, to treat her like an equal, instead of a slave to be ground into dirt.

  Now alone, she got herself ready for bed, anticipating sleeping in covers thicker than her fingernails. Her last covers barely kept out the chill.

  Then her eyes settled upon the pillows. A surge of loneliness hit her, knowing this would be the first night in years without Ratty. Of course, it was ridiculous to put that much attachment in an object, but Ratty had comforted her through many nights, many times when her heart pinched with sorrow. Sometimes for the parents she would never know, sometimes for the pain she saw every day or felt in her bones.

  Sometimes thinking about the friends she had lost.

  She undressed and pulled back the bedcovers.

  Wait. The pillows had a kind of bump to them. She pulled them apart and saw Ratty there, wedged underneath.

  Instantly her hands reached for the little sack of fabric. Eighteen years old, and she was delighted to see a ragged strip of a toy.

  A smile played upon her lips. She knew without a doubt that Brann had put it there. When had he found the time? />
  She didn’t know, but she fell asleep with a smile on her soul.

  Chapter Four

  The next week assaulted Elise in a blaze of new lifestyle. First came adapting to the peculiar schedule that the servants employed. She thought she would need to learn chores, but her time in Brann’s company left that role out. Brann trained daily in the basement, and Elise either watched or tried to spar with him, or practised her singing.

  Tarken didn’t seem to mind at all. He didn’t want his little songbird breaking herself over anything as long as she sang for him. In comparison to the other servants, she got treated marginally better, and the servants responded with jealousy. They didn’t want someone to be treated better by wyrms when all of them lived a knife’s edge away from death.

  Elise understood that, honestly. Didn’t mean she had to like it. The stares and whispers of jealousy followed her around, and she endured it as best as able. Elevated to a position beyond the rest of them. Elevated so much that it made her a target, whether she wanted it or not.

  She wasn’t allowed to go and visit anyone from the mines – not that it would have mattered, because she didn’t form any close relationships with the people there. Mostly because somewhere, their attitudes disgusted her. It was what inspired a song like Warrior to come out in the first place. Something humans should be. Not what the ones she associated with were.

  Fights in the basement happened once a week, always on Lastday, before the start of the new week. During that week, Elise spent her time in Brann’s company, even to the point where she ate with him. They kept things cool, and Brann never hinted at the “magic” anywhere where others might eavesdrop.

  Considerate of him, at least. Tarken didn't seem to mind his prize fighter hanging out with his prize singer. In fact, he encouraged it, because he thought the gruff Brann could do with a songbird to calm him down when he had too much pent up aggression. Elise wondered if he meant her to be used sexually as well as orally. Not that he ever clarified it further.