Ash and Ambition

by Ari Marmell

  His whisper was not, apparently, silent enough. Rasmus spun, his whole face taut with fury, and snapped his fingers. Two of the slaves Nycolos had dubbed collaborators descended on Keva, fists flying. Several others, along with Rasmus himself, watched Nycolos carefully, just waiting for him to interfere.

  He was tempted, not from any affection or loyalty to Keva but out of shared hatred of their oppressors—and, even more so, out of curiosity regarding what the man had been about to say. It was a temptation he resisted, however, patiently waiting for his water and closing his ears to the meaty thumps and cries of pain.

  ___

  “I don’t believe I’m familiar with the term, Master.”

  The overseers had assigned Smim to scout the new exploratory tunnels, counting on his gaunt build and sharp vision to help them locate traces of ore. Night, in the slave barracks, was the only time Nycolos had to speak with his goblin ally. They sat slumped, side by side, awaiting the evening meal (if one could dignify it with such a term).

  The barracks were not within the mine proper, as Nycolos had initially assumed, but rather in the least comfortable and most poorly built of the camp structures. Breezes and sounds wormed their way through chinks in the logs, then back out again when they decided the place wasn’t worth staying in. It was all one great room, without the slightest gesture toward privacy, and it reeked of unwashed bodies and leaky, crusted chamber pots.

  The pair kept their voices low, each relying on the other’s inhumanly sharp hearing, to ensure that the cramped confines and gap-ridden walls didn’t carry their words to an unwanted audience.

  “Gnome?” Nycolos asked. “A term in multiple human tongues. Something they came up with long ago to refer to the mountain fey.”

  “Ah.” The goblin nodded. “Like ‘elf’ for the fey of the wilds or the Bronze Empire?”

  “Precisely. A tiny, insufficient word for a notion far too large and too alien for them to comprehend.”

  “So also like ‘dragon’?” Smim prodded with a faint smirk.

  Nycolos ignored that. “It might just be a precaution, inspired by superstition and rumor, same as their fear of wyvern attack. Or they might have actually encountered the mountain fey. I’d very much like to know which…”

  A short procession marched in through the barracks’ door, a cluster of slaves carrying large bowls of a thick, unappetizing gruel. Or stew. It varied day by day and was often difficult to tell. Overseen by those same collaborators, including Veddai, they began scooping the slop into smaller bowls, cracked and clumsy little things, before handing them out.

  “Why not ask?” Smim suggested, pointing at one slave in particular. “You might have a receptive audience.”

  Safia, on meal duty tonight, hadn’t made any particular effort to engage with Nycolos, and he had no reason to count her as an ally. She was, however, a friend of Keva’s—a fact that would have been made obvious, even if Nycolos had not already known, by her expression during Keva’s punishment. Given Keva’s efforts, slight as they’d been, to make Nycolos feel welcome, that might inspire her toward sympathy.

  Unless she blamed him for getting her friend beaten.

  Once Nycolos had his own bowl, he moved to her side and walked with her, so they could speak without forcing her to pause in her task. She appeared puzzled by his approach, but he took her lack of obvious hostility as a positive sign.

  This close, he observed she had similar features to their captors, suggesting Ythani descent, but her mixed heritage was clear in her duskier eyes and skin. Otherwise, nothing much differentiated her from any of the other slaves. If her friendship with Keva was based on a common home or any ties of blood, neither of them showed it.

  “How is he?” That, Nycolos decided, would prove the most effective opening.

  Safia frowned. “I’m not sure.” She pointed with one of the bowls she carried, nearly spilling it. Across the crowded room, Keva sat huddled in the corner, bruise-pocked arms wrapped around his doubtless aching gut. “Someone else is serving that half of the room tonight. Deliberately, I’m sure.” Her bitter tang might have spoiled the food she was delivering.

  “So… What, do those vermin hate the rest of us so much? They enjoy the opportunity to beat us?”

  “Some. Others work to earn the overseers’ trust because standing watch is easier than the rest of our duties.” She paused, handed a bowl off into grasping hands. “They aren’t really even assigned to watch us, you know. They’re meant to be extra eyes to assist the guards. But some of them feel they can prove their loyalty by reporting the ‘infractions’ of fellow slaves. And even the ones who don’t? They’re not going to disobey, if they’re ordered to…” Again she gestured Keva’s way. “Well, do that.”

  It was as smooth an opportunity as Nycolos could have hoped for. “What is it exactly they’re supposed to be watching for, if not—?”

  “Oh, no. Vizret take them!”

  Across the chamber, another slave—acting, most assuredly, on Veddai’s orders—had delivered Keva his own “supper”: a tiny dollop of gruel, scarcely more than a mouthful, and not even in its own bowl. The battered young man was forced to catch what he could in cupped, unsteady hands, then lick and slurp at them like an animal.

  Veddai and his fellow collaborator cackled, each holding a bowl notably fuller than anyone else’s. Clearly the gruel that should have been Keva’s wasn’t going to waste.

  “Bastards!” Safia’s whole body was tense, her expression livid—and utterly helpless.

  Damn them, indeed, for their timing if nothing else. Was Nycolos never to learn even the simplest of the answers he sought? Frustrated and again swallowing a rising fury, he began to turn away.

  And yet…

  How long would he be trapped here, in this hellish subservience? Either a great while, in which case he might require allies beyond Smim, to help keep him alive; or he would find, or make, an opportunity to escape, which also might require assistance. Blood of his ancestors, apparently he needed allies just to learn what was going on in this wretched mine!

  He could already hear Smim’s arguments, that it was best, safest, to keep his head down, to avoid trouble; that he was ignoring the third option, which was that he offended the overseers enough that they chose simply to kill him. And yes, such arguments contained more than a kernel of wisdom, but Nycolos chose to rely on the fact that Justina Norbenus had, mere days ago, paid good silver for him. She wasn’t about to have him slain for a single infraction.

  It was sheer justification, hiding his true motives, he knew, but he quashed that knowledge deep inside.

  “What are you doing?” Safia demanded, alarmed by whatever tensing or shift in his posture she’d sensed.

  “Just going to reason with them.”

  She hissed something he didn’t bother to hear, but when he took his first steps toward Veddai, she followed a few paces behind.

  Veddai’s companion tapped the grizzled older man on the shoulder and pointed, so he might turn to meet Nycolos’s approach.

  “You want something, slave?”

  “A moment of your time.” Nycolos chose not to comment on the fact that, his favored position notwithstanding, Veddai was no less a slave than he. “Surely Keva’s been punished enough?”

  “What business of yours is that? Unless you’re looking for some of the same?”

  The sounds of conversation, muted as it already was, faded throughout the chamber, leaving only soft slurps. The prisoners might not want to miss whatever was about to occur, but they weren’t about to stop eating for it.

  “I only wanted to point out, if Keva’s too weak to work, it’s going to hurt productivity. Justina and Rasmus can’t possibly want that.”

  Safia’s soft sigh of resignation from behind was clear indication of how well she expected that argument to work. Come to think of it, Nycolos was probably far from the first slave to voice it.

  Veddai laughed. “Guess the rest of you will just have to work hard to make
up for it. And maybe help remind Keva of how unhappy you are about it the next time he looks like he’s about to yap out of turn.”

  “I see.”

  “Or the next time you are,” the collaborator added, poking him in the shoulder, hard with a wooden serving spoon.

  There it was. The real motivation, the one Nycolos had tried to bury beneath a topsoil of reasoning and justification along with his ever-simmering resentment and blazing pride: the hope that one or the other of these two brutes would do something very much like this.

  Because now, for whatever miniscule difference it made, this was self-defense.

  His grin grew wide enough nearly to split his face. From the rear of the room, somehow sensing what was about to occur, Smim muttered a fervent, “Oh, shi—”

  To a chorus of shocked cries, Nycolos lunged.

  No. He leapt.

  Mere feet from his victim the slave hurled himself through the air, propelled by an enraged strength. Hands and knees slammed into Veddai, carrying him back as though struck by a ballista before taking him to the floor. His jaw twisted in an inhuman snarl, Nycolos struck, over and over, tearing flesh and cracking bone.

  But he didn’t strike with fists.

  Shocks of pain shuddered through his fingers, but it wasn’t enough to stop him. Hands held spread and bent, talon-like, he practically dug at the collaborator, slashing and ripping. Deep gashes gaped wide, oozing thick rivulets of blood, very much as if Nycolos struck not with fingertips and nails but with genuine claws.

  Shocked by the speed and savagery of the assault, Veddai’s companion hesitated a long moment, but his friend’s screams ultimately spurred him into action. Rather than take the extra seconds to draw a weapon, he raised a fist high and brought it down, aiming the blow at Nycolos’s collarbone.

  Nycolos saw the strike coming, but instead of raising an arm to block it or dodge aside, he twisted so the fist landed instead on the outside of his shoulder. It ached, yes, but it was the attacker who caught the worst of it. Expecting a more fragile target, the man recoiled, howling at what had to be at least a fracture in his fingers.

  Nycolos rose, turning to face him, sparing only a quick glance downward to be sure Veddai wouldn’t be rejoining the struggle any time soon.

  The older man looked as though he’d been savaged by an animal. Narrow crevices of blood crossed his cheeks, his chest, his throat—which had not been torn wide open through sheer luck alone. Nycolos’s hands were drenched in crimson past the wrist, and slender, crinkled ribbons of skin dangled from his nails.

  It was neither the blood nor the brutality that brought Nycolos up short, however, froze him in his tracks. Those he had expected, welcomed, reveled in. No, it was the sudden confusion that his actions weren’t suited to his form, that he had fallen back on instinct and possibly given away far too much.

  This is not how humans fight!

  He was still overwhelmed with conflicting urges and a bewildered fear when the first of the guards, drawn from outside the barracks by the sounds of mayhem, tackled him to the earthen floor.

  ___

  “Nycolos Anvarri. What in the name of Straigon’s missing jawbone am I to do with you?”

  He stood before Justina Norbenus in what could only be described as some peculiar merging of an office and a sitting room. An ornate—to say nothing of heavy—sequence of manacles and chains linked his ankles, wrists, and throat. Three guards, fully armed and clad in cuirass and greaves, surrounded him, just beyond arm’s reach, but well within range of their narrow-tipped spears.

  The mine-owner herself reclined on a sofa of scarlet velvet cushions, transported here across the Outermark at who-knew-what difficulty and expense. At its head stood a rounded table with an ingenious rotating top, allowing her to keep all necessary ledgers and papers within reach. At the moment, however, it was turned to allow her access to a plate of berries that had, quite possibly, been even more difficult and costly to acquire than the furniture. In all four corners, small shelves held bowls of posies, their aroma cutting, if not concealing, the harsh odors of the nearby mine and its many workers.

  “In the days you’ve been here,” she continued, when it became clear Nycolos wasn’t prepared to answer her question, “you’ve proven yourself a good worker. Strong. In that regard, worth every mark I paid for you.

  “But it’s equally clear that you’ve not learned your lessons regarding troublemaking as well as Sanish claimed.”

  “Veddai struck me first,” Nycolos offered with, thanks to the manacles, an absurdly loud and metallic shrug.

  Justina’s wave of dismissal spattered a single drop of berry juice across an open ledger. “He is one of the First among you,” she said, referring not to his length of service but his position as what Nycolos called collaborator. “He’s allowed to strike you, with sufficient reason. Hitting back is not a right you have earned.”

  “So make me one of the First.”

  A moment of stunned silence, and then Justina burst into a disbelieving guffaw. “You want me to reward you for crippling one of my best men?”

  “Hardly crippled. With a chirurgeon’s attentions and sufficient time to recover, he should be…” The slow twisting of his owner’s expression warned Nycolos that this was probably not the right approach. “I’d be good for it,” he said, changing tack. “You said yourself I’m strong. I’m fast. And I know something of the mountain fey—the gnomes. That is who the guards and the First are really watching against, isn’t it?”

  “And what would you know of gnomes?”

  “That if there are any in this stretch of the mountain range, for one, they’re going to consider a mine such as yours to be an intrusion on their domain. And they’re not likely to notice, or care, for the difference between willing intruders and slaves. We’d all be in danger.

  “Sanish’s men did waylay me near the Outermark Mountains,” he added at her questioning glance, “albeit farther south. I’ve had plenty of time to learn much of the region’s threats.” You have no idea how much time, you stupid little creature…

  “I see.” Justina tapped a finger on her lower lip. “You very well might make a solid First, at that.

  “But no. Even if I were to ignore the incident with Veddai—and make no mistake, I’ll do no such thing—you’ve not been here remotely long enough. I don’t trust you enough, and the precedent… No.” She snapped her fingers, and the trio of guards straightened.

  “Take Nycolos back to the barracks. Remove the manacles from his neck and arms, but he’s to work hobbled until I order otherwise. Nycolos, you will receive four lashes a day, and short rations, for a week. I think you’re tough enough to weather that without too great an impact on your work. When that’s done, if you’ve endured well enough and your behavior’s improved, that’ll be the end of it. If not… Well, we’ll see.”

  Another snap, and the guards began marching the chain-swaddled slave toward the door. As the first of them reached for the latch, however, Justina spoke up again.

  “Nycolos?”

  He tilted his head but said nothing.

  “You are strong, and I suspect you may not fear pain the way many do. I also don’t know how close you are to the goblin, or why you spoke up on Keva’s behalf. But if we have another incident, if I have to discipline you again, they will share in your punishment.”

  There seemed little enough to be said to that, and the guards hustled him from the room before he might foolishly decide otherwise.

  ___

  Justina might have been correct, that Nycolos didn’t fear pain as much as most, but that didn’t mean he felt it any less.

  His back hurt.

  The overseers weren’t foolish. They whipped him at the end of the day, not the start, so as to affect his work as lightly as possible. Further, they allowed the other slaves—mostly Smim, with assistance from Keva and Safia—to treat his lashes with a salve meant to protect against infection or putrefaction.

  It still bloody damn we
ll hurt!

  He sat now on his pallet, hunched over to gaze absently at the short length of chain linking his ankles. The posture was painful, tugging at the wounds, but less so than lying on them or leaning back against the wall. From all about him came the rough snores, sighs, occasional sobs, and other sounds of despair that even slumber could not fully erase.

  Nycolos burned not with despair, but frustration.

  He could be free. In a mere instant, he could shatter these chains, shatter these walls, slaughter everyone here who had harmed or offended him—and anyone else he chose. Freedom or death, all at his whim. He would be, for all practical purposes, a god unto them.

  For a few minutes. And then he would die, his heart punctured by a triple-damned sliver of eldritch steel so small it should be less than an irritant! Just as that bloody knight should have been, the knight who wore an ever-more familiar face and bore an ever-more familiar name…

  Nycolos clenched both fists in his hair, tugging almost hard enough to rip tufts out by the roots, to keep himself from screaming aloud.

  And just as swiftly he stopped. His fists…

  He remembered the assault on Veddai, fingertips stabbing, and he wondered.

  In the desperation of the moment, weeks ago, it had taken all he had, every iota of effort and will, to change his shape to one that the intruding magical shard might not instantly slay. In the intervening days, he had adapted his ears, regaining a touch of the hearing he’d possessed before becoming a man. He knew he could permit his eyes to resume their prior form, ever so slightly, allowing him to see in the dark, and to gaze farther and more sharply than normal—but also that the effect was visible, marked him as something other than human. And he could control the strength inherent in his alien form, of course, as Smim had encouraged him to do; that he could, if he wished it, grow mightier than his human body should allow, albeit still far weaker than he once had been.

  What else, then, could he do? He had never truly experimented with a partial shapeshift, had performed the aforementioned feats as much by feel and instinct as by intent. He dare not reshape his body as a whole, or any of the organs deep within, for that most certainly would reawaken the sorcery that sought his heart.