by Rob J. Hayes
Josef was waiting for me back in our cavern. He was always waiting for me after my visits to the overseer. He knew the sorts of things I'd been through, had suffered through similar himself. Josef was always there for me in case I needed to talk or scream, or maybe just lend a shoulder when I needed to cry.
"What did he ask you this time?" Josef said as I slumped down next to him and accepted the heel of stale bread he offered.
"Where we trained," I said. "No. Where I trained. He didn't mention you."
Hardt and Isen were in another corner trading lazy blows. At least that was what I believed at the time. I know now that Hardt was helping Isen train. Pugilism is the art of fist fighting and it was extremely popular in the Pit. A scab could earn extra rations, alcohol, or a host of other rewards just by fighting in the arena below. They didn't even need to win, though losing was not advisable. Some men only fought when it was to the death. Yorin was one of those. The king of the arena, they called him, and he had never lost a fight. Strangely, there was never a shortage of scabs willing to challenge him. I wondered if some saw it as a way out. A final solution to their misery. I can think of a hundred ways less painful than challenging that monster to a fight.
I watched Isen duck and move. Watched him fire off a series of quick blows, staring at the way his muscles moved underneath his skin as they flexed, and I felt myself warm at the sight.
"Eska. What did you tell him?" Josef asked and I got the feeling it was not the first time.
"The truth." I saw no reason to lie to the overseer and I saw no reason to lie to Josef. Only after the words were out of my mouth did I realise it was a betrayal. Whether the overseer already knew the answer or not, I was a prisoner of war and it was my responsibility to fight him, no matter what. The truth was staring me in the face, but I had been to bloody stupid to see it. Of course he asked me an asinine question he already knew the answer to. It was never about the answer. The overseer was trying to establish a rapport. He asked a question, I answered, he gave me a reward. The fucker was trying to train me like an animal. Well, I would bloody well show him that this animal has teeth.
"Good," Josef said. He leaned forwards and hugged me. "No sense in angering him. We need to survive, Eska. Both of us. There's no shame in telling the overseer what he already knows."
I saw a strange thing in Josef's eyes then. I saw hope rekindled from embers I had long believed dead. I wondered what sort of power could put a man back together again after being broken for so long. And they had broken Josef the moment Orran surrendered. The answer to that question terrified me when I finally learned the truth, and it haunts my nightmares even to this day.
Chapter 6
I was just six years old when the Orran recruiters came for me. They knew what they had even before they started my training; the diviners told them I was special, a powerful Sourcerer in the making. All I knew was that one moment I was playing in the trees, not a care in the world as only a child can, then I was sitting on a horse in front of a woman I didn't know. Larrisa, was her name and she smelled of wood smoke, always of wood smoke.
When I think back now, I can't remember much else about Larrisa. I believe she was kind despite having just ripped me away from my family. I was scared. It was the first time I had ever really left Keshin, certainly the first time I had ever left the forest save for climbing above the canopy. I didn't even have my family for company. That was quite the shock. We grew up poor, as village folk often are. We had a small home, barely more than two rooms, really. We cooked in one of those rooms and slept in the other, and my parents hung a blanket across that second room whenever they wanted time for intimacy. My brother and I huddled together at night on the same pallet. I found that separation to be one of the most difficult things to deal with. I both hated and loved my brother. He was both a bully and a bore in equal measure, but those first few nights away from Keshin, I struggled to find sleep without the smell of him beside me. We cling to things, familiar things, not because they are good for us, but because we are scared that the unknown might be worse.
I cried a lot in those days, but then I've never been afraid to cry. Some people tell me it shows weakness. I have never seen having emotion as a weakness, nor showing them. My emotions have always made me stronger. My hatred and anger give me strength when it should fail. My love and compassion have made me allies that otherwise might have been enemies. I have known emperors who were trained to wear their face like a mask, fall. Yet I have sat on a throne of corpses, and it was my emotions that helped put me here.
It was a long, hard journey from my old home to my new. I remember that much, though not many of the specifics. Memory is a strange thing. I know the journey was a hard one. I know I felt exhausted and scared. I know I ached from long days atop a horse and how mysterious that beast seemed to me at the time. Yet, when I think back on those memories now, I see them as happy. It was my first time out in the world and I saw more in those weeks than in the past six years of my life. I missed my family, and I didn't understand why I had been taken from them, but the distractions of the world outside Keshin kept those fears confined to tears cried into the darkness each night.
We passed fields of red and white; flowers, I now know, but at the time they were just blankets of colour in an otherwise green world. I saw a lake so large I took it for the ocean. I had no idea at the time what lay at the bottom of that lake, no idea of the horrors that haunted those waters when darkness fell. A city ruined and sunk beneath the waters, and thousands of lives lost as casualties of a war between gods who should have fucking known better, all hidden from me at the time. It seemed endless and magical. We stopped at a farm that bred giant trei birds, flightless and vicious as an angry snake. My wonder only increased when I saw men and women riding those birds, wearing full armour and trading blows with blunted swords.
We passed through towns that made Keshin seem tiny. Hundreds of buildings clustered together. I was both shocked and awed. My memories of those towns are a blur of people and noise. I remember Larrisa kept me close, always a hand on my shoulder as she shopped for fresh supplies. We never stopped for long at any of those towns. Larrisa preferred to keep us on the road. I don't think I ever saw her sleep. Each night I drifted off with her staring blankly into the flames of our little fires. Each morning I woke to find breakfast waiting and the camp being struck. Even the most mundane of things, like breakfast, can seem magical to the eyes of a child.
I think it might have been pure chance that a day out from Picarr, where the Orran Academy of Magic stood, we ran into another recruiter, this one escorting a young boy. Larrisa seemed to know the man by name and the two dismounted, leading their horses side by side as that mammoth city grew on the horizon. Picarr was unlike anything I had seen before, a buzzing hive of activity and noise and smells.
For a while we rode in silence, stealing glances at each other. He was a young boy, though a little older than myself, with a muddy face and a black eye. I doubt I looked much better. Larrisa had not given me time to pack any clothing, and I was wearing the same faded tunic and trousers I had been when we left Keshin. Children rarely care about being clean. These days I enjoy bathing every day and have ten wardrobes full of clothes, though I tend to mostly wear my robes. There is a certain freedom in a robe I find quite liberating; I won't begin to list the things and people I have hidden beneath my robes from time to time. Some things are not for impressionable ears.
Josef was the first to introduce himself. Always the more diplomatic and sociable of the two of us, he thrust his hand toward me and all but shouted his name as though it was some great act of defiance. The more I have travelled, the more amazed I have become at the ways people introduce themselves. I have seen people kiss just to say hello, and I have been kissed many times for just that reason, often by complete strangers. The clasping of hands is perhaps one of the most common, at least amongst terrans. It's about forming a physical connection from one person to another. I can get the measure of a man
by the firmness of his grip, the moistness of his palms. It's also about trust. To have someone that close, to tie up one hand gripping theirs. Handshakes are a dangerous business in some parts of the world.
I held out my own hand just as Josef did and I said my name. I was a little startled when he lunged closer and grabbed hold of my wrist. It was by pure instinct that I returned the grip rather than fall backwards off the horse. That might have been a rather ignoble end to my life before it even got started. It probably would have saved the world a lot of pain.
There is an innocence in children that is only matched by their cruelty. There is also the rarest form of acceptance and compassion. Only children can go from complete strangers to closest of friends in a moment. Trust and love can take a lifetime to build in adults, but in children it can take just a second. Josef and I were that way. Maybe we were kindred souls, even from the beginning, or maybe we were just two scared children looking for comfort in one another. We were still holding hands as the recruiters marched us up to the academy and presented us to Prince Loran Tow Orran, the man the Terrelans called The Iron Legion.
Five months into my time in the Pit and I was starting to feel a change in my arms, as though they were stronger than they had ever been. Prig no longer selected a new scab to hold the marker each day. Ever since my first time it had been my job and mine alone. At first, I think it was punishment for staring at him, an open act of defiance against the fear the fat fucker cultivated within us all. After a while, it simply became part of my workday. We no longer waited for Prig to select me out of the team. Each day when we arrived in our tunnel, I picked up the marker, held it to the wall, and stared at Prig as he lined up the hammer. There was a change in the foreman too, Prig no longer met my stare as he took his swings. The cowardly fuck rarely met my eyes at all, always finding something else to look at.
I still wore the bandages Hardt had given me. I washed them regularly and then bound my hands again soon after. After a while I learned to wrap them around my arms by myself. I think Josef felt shunned by it. Maybe he thought it was me claiming I no longer needed him. He couldn't know it was so I could wrap the shard of mirror tight, hidden, and close to my skin. I kept it with me at all times and told no one about it, let no one see it. It was mine. My secret weapon against the dangers of the Pit. I felt stronger just knowing that I had some sort of defence.
My routine changed as the weeks rolled on. I still woke up and took a few minutes to hate the world, my situation, and everyone I knew, including myself. I still hated Prig most of all for his daily torture, and I dreamed of shoving my little shard of mirror into his fat neck. In those dreams he always died quickly with eyes full of terror, staring into my face, pleading, my name the final thing that ever passed his shit-stained lips. I know now that men like Prig do not die easily, and my little shard was quite small. It would have hurt, but I would have been lucky to kill him with such a weapon. More likely it would just piss him off and earn me a savage beating for the trouble.
I still worked each day away to Prig's schedule. Always digging. Hammers and picks striking stone and the squeal of those bloody rusted wheels as the cart took the rubble away. There are some noises that tear away every nerve you have; we all have those weaknesses. Sometimes, even now, those noises drive me either to cower as though terrified, or lash out in violence. It was no different back then, only I didn't have the power to lash out. Each day I heard those squealing wheels long after they had fallen silent.
Prig grew more violent, both with myself and with Isen. I didn't know why at the time. I didn't know then that Isen regularly fought in the arena, nor how his performance affected Prig's standing with the other foremen. Nor did I understand that his increasing violence against me wasn't just punishment for the daily defiance I showed him. It was also an order from the overseer. Rarely a day went by where I didn't earn a lash across my back, or a bruise if he was brave enough to get close and use his fists. It was fucking torture. The physical kind of torture designed to slowly wear away at a person's sense of safety and defiance, and Prig knew his trade well.
Some people learn to fear the threat of violence. It trains them into obedience just as some people train a dog with a stick rather than table scraps. I am not one of those people. I came to expect the violence. On some level, I thought I deserved it. Instead of fearing it, or trying to please Prig to stop the pain, I taunted him to see how far he would go. Some people flee from danger while others court it. Me? I stare danger right in the face and tell it to take its best fucking shot.
Josef no longer saw the overseer, but my appointments held at once per week. They were always different. Each week he would ask me a new question, some personal, and some not. Once he asked about my family, and if I had any siblings. Another time he asked me how many Orran Sourcerers survived the battle of Fort Vernan. Sometimes I answered his questions without hesitation and other times I refused to answer no matter how innocent that answer might seem. I did it to keep the overseer guessing. Thinking back on it, I really had no other reason. I liked trying to confuse the man. It seems a silly game I was playing now, yet at the time it was so important. I never took the rewards he offered. Not once. More often than not I left the room in chaos, destroying as much of it as I could. It was petty, but I am petty, and I took my acts of rebellion wherever I could.
"You are difficult to play against," Hardt admitted, his hand clamped firmly over one of his Trust die.
"Thank you." I let slip a small smile.
The big Terrelan shook his head. "I didn't say you were good at the game. I said you were difficult to play against. You're too unpredictable."
Again, I smiled. I had chosen my own side long before my turn to play Hardt had rolled around. "I'm taking it as a compliment," I said.
"Don't," Hardt said with a grimace. "Unpredictable to your enemies is good. Unpredictable to your friends is bad. Hard to catch a person when you don't know which way she'll jump."
I shrugged. At the time I still took it as a compliment. I revelled in the fact that no one knew much about me. Even those who did had no idea what I would do from one moment to the next. It took some time, and some loss, before I understood the lesson Hardt was trying to teach me.
"You think we're friends?" I asked. I didn't consider Hardt a friend. Back then I had only one friend and he was a terrible Trust player.
"Allies, at the very least." Hardt's voice was always deep, but also soft. I liken it to the rumble of thunder in the far distance. Even quietly, it demands you stop and listen, and when you do it's almost comforting. But you also know there's violence there, terrible and unrestrained.
Alliances, real alliances, are built from trust. They need it as a foundation if they are to survive. Alliances built from need are doomed to fail just as soon as one no longer needs the other. I didn't trust anyone.
I nodded. "Allies, then," I said. Hardt smiled and I shifted my hand just a little to turn the face of the die over. "Ready?"
We lifted our hands at the same time. Hardt's dice showed friendship, mine showed betrayal. I reached over and took the man's die, holding his disappointed stare all the way. "I am the weapon," I said quietly.
Eventually Hardt chuckled. "One day, girl, you might learn the point of the game," he said. "Then you really will be dangerous."
I scoffed, thinking myself smart. Thinking myself already more dangerous than Hardt could know. I was a foolish girl. I lost that game on the roll of the dice, but such is the way when everyone knows you'll betray them. I lost far more often than I won, and seethed quietly every time.
Later on, in the evening, and again I call it that only to keep some sense of structure for my time in the Pit, Josef and I were curled up together, the threadbare blanket draped over us. I pressed myself close into his back and felt the heat build between us. It could get bitterly cold in the Pit, or sometimes it could be uncomfortably warm. I never did quite get to grips with the climate down there.
"Hardt was wrong," Josef sa
id quietly. "You're not unpredictable."
"No?" I quite liked the idea of being unpredictable.
Josef started to shift and rolled over until he was facing me. He looked tired; his young face gaunt with lines I hadn't seen before. There was a dusting of hair on his cheeks and chin, and I wondered how I had never before noticed it. He was just seventeen, but the rigours of the Pit made him look at least a decade older.
"No," Josef said with a smile. "You're just terrible at the game."
I punched him in the stomach and he laughed it away.
"I'm serious," he said.
"You're a shit-sniffing liar, is what you are." I've never liked being told I'm bad at a thing; anything really. My tutors at the academy realised this early on. They always expected so much of me but not nearly as much as I expected of myself. I've never been able to decide if I worked so hard to impress them, or simply not to hate myself for failing. "Besides," I said. "If I'm bad at the game, you're worse. For once you're worse at something." I wonder if I sounded as bitter as my memory suggests. "You always lose first."
We were close enough that I could smell Josef's breath. It was as rancid as my own. He grinned and shook his head. "I always lose first. But I'm an excellent player."
I rolled onto my back to stare up at the roof. "I don't understand," I said. It took a lot for me to admit that. The words were hard to push out, and I could never have said them to anyone else. I think I probably sounded sulky as only a young woman can.
"It's not about the game, Eska," Josef said, his voice already light as though he were drifting off. "It's never about the game. It's about the players."
