I feel like someone has punched me in the stomach. It is not the same.
But it has to be. I grab another arrow and test it only to get the same result. I let the arrow fall out of my hand and roll back to the ground as footsteps sound to my left.
“What are you doing up here?”
I look up at King Jovan. I am so disappointed by my discovery, I can’t speak. Shaking my head, I sit down with my back to the side of the walkway.
“You were looking at our arrows. Why?” he asks, walking closer.
I shrug. “Just interested.”
“I’m sure. Tell me,” he says, and his voice is less harsh. I tilt my head to look at him. I’m sure he has already guessed what I was doing.
“I was seeing if it was the same as the arrow…that killed Kedrick,” I say and hold my breath.
“You have been withholding information, I see. And you think a Bruma did it,” he says, his voice heavy with doubt.
“The arrow was not a Solati arrow,” I say. “Our arrows are always made of Kaur, the wood is black. The wood on the arrow was not black, but it is not like this light, strong wood either,” I say.
“Spruce,” the King offers distractedly. It must be the name of the wood. He crouches forward and sits down beside me. “If it was not a Solati…then who?” I do not think he is talking to me. I stay silent.
“Do you have the arrow?” he asks, looking down at me.
“No,” I lie straight away. He nods and looks forward again.
“What do you think of the men’s shooting?” he asks, interrupting my disappointed thoughts.
“Terrible,” I say.
The King startles me by laughing. “It’s true. We don’t usually use arrows here, the wind is too strong. But we need to learn in case…” He shrugs and gets to his feet.
“In case you need to shoot my family and friends?” I say. He doesn’t need to know I only have two friends.
He doesn’t answer.
“Would you like to come down and shoot?” he asks. I look up at him as I get to my feet and brush off my trousers. Why is he asking me to go down there?
“I cannot shoot,” I say.
“Why?”
I grip the edge of the veil and wave it slightly. “I would need to be able to see to do so.”
“Huh.” He moves to the other wall of the walkway and looks down over the training yard. “How far can you see?” My stomach twists in warning. But I ignore it.
“I can see most of you from here. I can see the shape of the castle and the shape of the women over there. The light is good,” I reply.
“That’s all?” He seems stunned. “What about the weaponry over there?”
“No.”
“That arrow on the ground to your left?”
I glance to my left. “No.”
The King holds up a hand to Malir’s enquiring shout. “How do you do anything? Especially in the dark. How do you even know our shooting is terrible?” he asks.
I move up next to him. “I get by,” I say with a bite. He grins. “And I know because I can hear the sound of the bowstrings as they loose an arrow and then the thud of the arrow hitting the target. There are many more sounds of bowstrings being releasing than there are of the arrows hitting the target.”
I pause. “I can also tell you are worried about something. You are angling your body, so I cannot see much of the yard.” I hesitate. “Be assured, nothing I see here will get back to my mother.”
“You read minds now?” I almost laugh as he vocalises the thought I have had several times about him.
He continues. “I have no qualms of you watching. If you were male I might have some objection.” Angry heat floods my cheeks at his comment. What an ignorant thing to say.
“If you didn’t take the arrow, then how did you see it that night?” he asks, watching for my reaction.
Oops, that’s what the warning twinge in my stomach had been about. “My veil was not on the whole time,” I say in a curt voice.
He stares at me for a few moments and then turns towards the stairs leading back to the yard. “I will make some enquiries about the arrow,” he says over his shoulder.
My run down the walkway is all the women can talk of for the rest of the day. The story has changed in the re-telling. Now, I supposedly ran behind the targets while the arrows were still being loosed. I fob off their inquiries by saying I thought Kaura had been down there. Jacky doesn’t buy it for a second. I’m eager to escape her accusing eyes and get to my room. I don’t know how Roman does it.
I’m drifting in a dreamless sleep when I become aware of a hush outside of my bedroom door. I roll over and listen. If Jovan were beating his guards again it would be much louder. I start fading back into sleep. I love this bed.
The door crashes open and rebounds off the stone wall behind it.
I jump and clamber to my feet, trying to get my balance in the middle of the soft-heaped bed. I can’t see anything, but my ears pick up footsteps, three sets of them. I need time for my eyes to adjust enough to see their outlines.
“Who are you?” I say.
“None of your fucking business,” a deep voice answers from in front of me. The voice belongs to a large man, the sound coming level at me across the bed. There is a quiet laugh in response to the thug’s comment further to my left. The sound comes from lower down, but I cannot guess anything else from this second man, except that his breathing is heavy. He is unlikely to be fast.
Light footsteps patter back to the door, it is shut and a chair dragged over to it, I assume to keep out unwanted interruptions. These footsteps belong to a smaller man or a very good fighter.
I can see the silhouettes of the two men closest to me now. I strike while the three are separated. Running over furs, I jump.
My foot connects with the tallest man’s nose. I hear a satisfying crunch.
The rug under my feet absorbs my landing, taking all sound from it.
The heavy breather swings at me and I push the blow over my head with both arms, whipping my left fist back to then jab him in the throat. My wrist complains at the impact.
I return to the first while the heavy breather now adds a noisy wheezing sound to his inhalation.
The third man has returned from the door, but he lingers at the front of the bed. He is small. Maybe a boy.
Kaura barks and growls from her box. I’m glad she can’t get out.
I use my left knee to land a blow between the tall man’s legs and deliver a sharp uppercut which snaps his head back. Loud wheezing sounds behind me, I twist back, kicking my right heel into his fleshy stomach, smiling as he crashes into the wall, gagging now.
Two down. I start towards the skinny man and stop, my heart in my mouth.
He holds a whining, squirming body in his hands.
“One more step Solati whore, and the dog gets a slit throat,” a cruel voice rings out. It is a man after all, not a boy.
“It would be a shame if you killed your puppy by being difficult,” he continues. I can almost imagine a twisted sneer on his face from the tone of his voice.
There is a dull thudding in my ears, I sense the other two retrieving themselves from the ground behind me. I watch Kaura struggle and know what I will do. She has brought me so much happiness. I could not bear it if she died this way.
My hands drop to my sides in defeat and I nod. I am powerless.
I release my breath when the small man places Kaura back in her box. He remains close to her though, probably expecting me to attack and rightly so. This man is obviously the only one of the three who has some intelligence. He nods behind me and with no warning there is a crashing blow to the side of my head. Black patches spot my vision.
Staggering to the side, I struggle to regain my balance. Blinking in slow motion. Before I can fully stand, there is a crushing sensation in my ribs. I hit the ground, the breath knocked from me, fire in my side. They kick my lower back and I arch backwards, unable to decide between protecting my back
or my ribs.
“That’s where a good slut should be. On her back.” The men laugh together over my head.
I try to lessen their blows. I hold the cloth of my veil between my teeth, to keep it down. They don’t seem to care what my face looks like, they just seem intent on getting the job done. In fact, I wonder if they prefer my veil on. Maybe it is easier to beat someone to death when their face is covered.
My eyes dart to their faces when they get close to me, I do not recognise them from the castle, but I commit their features to memory. If they do not kill me, I will be hunting them down.
My vision starts to cloud when a kick cracks my head to the side, only slightly dampened as I move in the direction with the blow. I know I will lose consciousness soon. My attempts to block and divert the worst blows become weaker. My hands drop uselessly to cover my head. I hear dull smacking thuds as they connect blows with my body. I no longer feel them though. It is like I am a spectator watching my death.
“Enough,” the skinny man says from far away
There is another dull thud, my body is rolled by another kick to my side.
“Enough, you fucking idiot. He said to beat her nearly to death, not to kill her.” The man’s voice is at the other end of a long tunnel.
I fade in.
“She isn’t so bad looking. Even with the blood.”
“For fuck’s sake Nam, put it away. We don’t have time for you to get your dick wet.”
I fade out.
Chapter Twenty-two
There is an annoying sound in my head. Something wet is dragging over my skin. I cannot open my eyes. What happened? My head throbs and bile rises, burning my throat and the back of my nose. The noise is making the nausea worse. I try to swallow.
Flashes of the night before start trickling back to me. I was beaten. And by the excruciating pain radiating through my body, I am alive.
I try to open my eyes again and the left one moves very slightly.
“Kaura,” I try. I lick my lips, my tongue running over several painful splits.
“Kaura.” This time a rasp comes out. “Kaura, shush,” I say. The annoying sound stops as she quits barking to nuzzle the side of my jaw, which also hurts.
“I’m okay,” I rasp out. I think. I start an inventory. My fingers, wrists, elbows and shoulders all move. All are painful and take a bit of coaxing to respond, but they feel nothing like my broken wrist did a few months ago. My head throbs, taking over my vision. I swallow yet another lot of bile. My legs are in a similar state to my arms. I’m going to have a very bad limp for a while.
The real issue is discovered as I try to sit up. Hot searing pain lances across my ribs and lower back, taking my breath away and forcing me back to the floor.
“Veni!” I hiss. I lay until the pain dissipates to a lower level. Bracing myself, I roll onto my tummy, propping my upper body onto my elbows. Once I am safe from losing my stomach on the floor and the flare of pain has lessened, I move to my hands and knees. The black spots I am learning to hate flood in, I spend a lot of time begging them to stay away. Sweat drips down my neck. My veil is stuck to the blood underneath my nose.
Eventually, I manage to crawl to the seat at the base of the bed and prop my arms on it, resting my head on top of them. Kaura is whining again. In my life I had probably had three beatings which were worse than this, but only because bones had been broken and required longer to heal. I do not think I have ever been kicked in the back before. I hope the guards are not dead. They must be if they have not checked up on me yet.
“Hush, Kaura. I’m okay,” I say again. “You were a brave girl last night. And you got out of your box, too.” She looks at me like I am crazy.
I pull myself into a sitting position on the long seat and rest my pulsating head against the stone column to my left. What happened last night? Why had those men attacked me? The men had been thugs. The comment by the small man at the end about their orders swims around in my head. They were hired. Who hates me that much? A few come to mind. Then another thought comes to me. What if it is the same Bruma who tried to kill me on Osolis? It’s hopeless. I’m a Solati in a castle of Bruma who all have the resources to hire these kinds of people. Finding the culprit would be an impossible task. I can’t even find Kedrick’s killer in a small group of eleven.
Anger floods through me as it often does after a beating. I hold onto it and it burns away the blurry edges of my vision. Violence had been expected in the first weeks after I arrived, but it had been a month or more since I had begun to feel more settled and less like the foreigner. I look out the window. I judge it to be early morning, though I cannot be sure.
I refused to appear weak. I will go about my normal day. A grimace of a smile spreads on my face as I imagine the look on the face of the Bruma who hired the thugs when I turn up at breakfast.
Using the column, I push into standing and spend a minute there before moving to the pitcher of water across the room. I pour a small amount into my mouth and swirl it around before spitting it out. A darkened red colours the basin. I swallow the next mouthful and taste the rustiness of blood as I do. I pull the veil carefully from the blood under my nose and then with shaking hands, I trace over my face. Two bruised eyes, one swollen and bloody nose, thankfully not broken. And one very painful jaw. Talking and eating is going to be difficult.
Slowly, painfully, I wash the blood from my body and my veil, wishing the whole while Olandon was here. He always helped me after my beatings. The skin is split on my shoulder and legs where their boots have cut through. The rest is just bruised. I wash the cuts out as best I can with the limited water. I feel across my chest and the skin feels bruised. I pull on the children’s tunic I initially wore which has a high neckline, hopefully it will cover the bruises there. A thick coat goes on top of it.
A wave of nausea too strong to ignore comes over me. Ripping my veil off, I rush to the bowl and stoop down to vomit up the water I just drank. The veil goes back on. I am lucky it is black or it would be unfit to wear with all the stains it has collected.
After struggling through changing my trousers and boots with the pain in my back, I’m ready for breakfast and already regretting my decision to leave my room today. My blurry mind reminds me why I am doing it. Maybe I’ll just head down, say a few hellos and then come back up to my room.
I leave the room expecting to see dead guards, but no one is there. They must have disposed of the bodies. I do not know how I will bring up their disappearance without giving away I am injured. Should I tell Malir, or Kedrick’s brother?
I move slowly at first, my pain easing slightly as my body warms. Enough that I can walk with some semblance of normalcy if I’m careful. By the time I reach the bottom of the stairs, I am swallowing constantly to keep my stomach inside of me. I see the archway. The throbbing in my head intensifies and the black patches renew their assault.
I need a moment before I enter.
I leave the main hallway, moving into a smaller hall. A blurry glance tells me it is empty. I lean on the wall gasping, trying to stay upright on my shaking legs. The torches down the hall make the dizziness worse. I close my eyes, breathing deeply. My right hand applying pressure to my painful ribs to help with each inhalation.
“Tatuma?”
My feeble effort to keep the black patches at bay prevents panic.
“What’s wrong with you? You’re hurt.” The commanding voice moves closer.
Veni! Anyone but him. I crack the left eye open to find the King bending down beside me.
I shake my head. “No, I am fine.” I curse inwardly at my answer.
“I’m sure. What have you done?” he asks, moving around me. I try to straighten, but my ribs catch as I do. A hiss of pain escapes me.
“I fell down the stairs to my room and hurt my ribs.” I gasp, latching onto his belief I have somehow created my current pain.
“Let me tell you if they are broken or bruised. I’ve had many myself.” A massive hand moves to the front
of my coat. He continues, “Though I am surprised you fell down them to begin with. Your balance looks to be quite good.”
I shrug off his hands. “Don’t worry. I’ll have a look once I’m back in my quarters.”
He frowns down at me and steps back, looking up and down the hallway.
“Where are your guards?” I look up at him through my left eye and lift one shoulder in a shrug.
The King’s eyes narrow and his voice softens into a dangerous tone. “Tatuma. You would not, by some foolish decision, be lying to me, would you?”
I swallow back more bile and put a hand to my head as I see two King Jovans. I shake my head both in denial to his question and to clear my head. The King steps into me, grabbing at my coat and rips it open against my weak protests.
He bites off a sound as he looks down. I follow his gaze and see blood has soaked through in several places. He looks at my chest also. Despite the high neckline there must be a bruise showing there. He grabs my right shoulder.
“What the fuck happened to you? Who has beaten you? Was it your guards?” he says as he bends down in front of my face. If the stone wall was not already at my back I would be trying to move away from him, as it is I push myself into the wall hoping to melt into it.
I start to repeat my previous answer, but he shakes my shoulder.
“Do not,” he says right in my face, “lie to me.”
I do not answer. The black spots have returned with a vengeance. I put my hand on the wall again and breathe deeply.
“Put this back on.” He shoves my jacket at me.
“No,” I moan and push weakly at his hands.
“Olina, I need to have you tended to, but I cannot do it in the hallway. Put on your coat so no one sees and I will help you to somewhere more private,” he says in a rough voice which would be as close to gentle as I think he gets.
I put on the coat and stumble beside the King, back the way I came. Luck is with me, we don’t pass anyone. I get to the stairs before my legs give out and I start sinking to the ground.
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