by Emily Colin
“Come down,” he says.
7
Ari
I divest Eva of her stolen weapons belt and march her back through the woods to the rendezvous point, careful to touch her only with my blade. Whether it’s because the point of my dagur is digging into her back or because she knows it’s a fruitless endeavor, she doesn’t fight me.
While her compliance makes my life easier, part of me wishes she would fight back. Something about her stubbornness, her raw courage and determination, draws me like a magnet to its pole. Thinking about her climbing out of the river, dark hair dripping down her back and her thin nightgown hugging the curves and angles I’d felt when I’d pinned her to the ground outside the Rookery—ah, how I wish Efraím had assigned me to be her recovery agent by the river. She wouldn’t have gotten the best of me like she did with Skau—but by the Sins, how I would have loved for her to try.
I steal a glance at her through the thinning dark and realize she is staring over her shoulder at me, her dark eyes fixed on my face. I feel as if she sees right through me—all my thoughts and secret desires, the relentless ambition that drives me to train until my hands are callused and my muscles aching, the nights I’ve spent picturing her face and denying myself, again and again. Never mind what I’m thinking right now.
Blood rushes to my face, burning, and I turn away so she can’t see. “Keep moving, little warrior,” I snap.
“Don’t call me that.” Her voice is low, threatening. It makes me laugh.
“You do know I’ve got a knife at your back, yeah?”
“I don’t care. I’m not your pet.”
“I’ll call you what I want,” I say, letting my voice drop into the cadence I use to coax subjects in the interrogation chamber into revealing their secrets—the one I’d used to make Eva tell me what she’d done to Skau, that hopeless sinner. Efraím will never let such carelessness pass without punishment. “Besides, it’s a compliment. You’re a fighter, for all you haven’t got any training. That was a clever ruse, tricking Skau that way. And just look at what you’ve done to my clothes.”
“Now you’re mocking me.”
“Maybe a little,” I admit, stepping over a log.
“Well, don’t.” She’s looking straight ahead, but I can still feel the fierce weight of those dark eyes on me. “This may be one big joke to you, but it’s serious to me. This is the last thing I ever wanted. You’re nothing but trained killers.”
The accusation stings, and reflexively, I lash out. “Oh, really? What about that day in Clockverk Square? You took a man’s life long before I ever did, Citizen Marteinn.”
Eva stops dead. If my reflexes weren’t honed to perfection, I might’ve run her through. I pull my blade back just in time, ease it upward. “You remember,” she says.
“Of course I do,” I say, my voice deliberately indifferent. “Who wouldn’t?”
“That’s not what I mean,” she says, turning to face me. I draw the blade away and let her. By the nine hells, the look on her face—I am falling drowning going under. Here in the woods with my blade inches from her throat, her in those ridiculous too-big clothes—I am supposed to be delivering her to Efraím for the Reckoning, but all I want to do is stand here forever with her looking at me like that. As if she sees me—all of me. Not just what I show the Commonwealth, but who I really am. It is terrifying and wonderful and dangerous all at once, and I want it. I want her.
“You stood up for me,” she says. “You didn’t look away.”
“Don’t talk about that,” I say, my voice a rasp.
“I never thanked you. I couldn’t. But that day—you gave me courage. You were the only one who didn’t turn from me.”
She steps closer, into my blade, and now I can smell her—sweat and dirt and river water and a sweet, spicy scent I can’t identify. “Step back,” I say, forcing the words through the sandpaper of my throat, but she doesn’t move.
“Thank you,” she whispers. I can feel her breath on my face.
My hand shakes and the dagur shakes with it and I look at them both as if they belong to someone else. This has never happened to me before. I tighten my grip so Eva won’t feel the tremble of the blade against her skin, but too late: I smell the blood before I see it, a thin line welling on her neck, black in the dim light.
“I warned you,” I say, as if bleeding her is something I intended all along. “Step away.”
Eva moves, and for a moment I believe she is actually going to do what I’ve asked. But then I feel the cold slide of metal against my belly, piercing unerringly through the tear in my shirt to press against my skin.
She has pulled a knife on me.
We stand there, my blade against her throat and hers against my stomach. And then I start to laugh. “Where did that come from?”
She doesn’t answer, but then again, she doesn’t have to. She took advantage of my pride, that I assumed I had control of the situation. I didn’t search her, just took the weapons belt. I figured she’d realize there was no point in fighting.
I have underestimated her—again.
“My compliments.” I disarm her and grab her by the shoulder, spinning her around. “You’re full of surprises, little warrior. Now march, before I lose my patience and draw more than a line of blood.”
Eva obeys, her back straight. I have never been so glad not to see someone’s face in my life.
She took me—like Skau, like a common mark. She played me, assessed my reaction, and used it to distract me. No one else could have gotten the drop on me like that.
I’m mad at myself—but I’m also intrigued as hell. The rest of the way through the woods, I imagine training with Eva, hunting her, working her in the interrogation chamber. What would it take to break a girl like this?
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this kind of challenge, and something in me rises up, eager. Which just proves what a fool I am. She messes with my concentration, subverts my focus. Assuming she passes the Trials, someone else will mentor her, train her. She’ll be assigned to one of the experienced bellators, the way I was assigned to Efraím. I’ll only have cause to come up against her during sparring matches or competitions—and that will be temptation enough for me.
Occupied by these dark thoughts, I drive Eva before me into the clearing. The sun is breaking over the crags, and by its light I see the semi-circle of bellators, faces set in an expressionless mask. In the center of the curve stand the other two recruits. And in front of them stands Efraím.
He turns when he hears us approach. “Took you long enough,” he says.
“I’m sorry, sir.” I press the blade against Eva’s throat, feeling more like myself. “She led me on a bit of a chase. But as you can see, it all worked out in the end.”
“Hmmm,” Efraím says. “And what of her threats, Bellator Westergaard? Does the kitten have teeth, after all?”
I shrug the shoulder that isn’t attached to the hand holding the blade. “She attacked my clothes, sir. A vicious assault.”
A low murmur of laughter spreads through the Bellatorum’s ranks, choked off as Efraím swivels to glare at them. “What a shame,” he says, turning his attention back to me. “More paperwork for you, Westergaard. We all know how you dislike that. I trust you paid her back in kind?”
I twitch the blade to the side, revealing the line of clotted blood at her throat. “Just a nick. No real harm done.”
Eva doesn’t move, but I can feel the indignation emanating from her all the same. My lips curve up in a smile. “To be fair, sir, she did draw first blood,” I say, switching the knife to my other hand and holding up my sword arm so they can see.
Efraím makes a noise low in his throat, somewhere between amusement and annoyance. “And how did she manage that?”
“She was in a tree, sir. And she’d gotten Skau’s weapons belt. I could have gone up there after her right away, but I was curious to see what she’d do first.” I leave out the part where Eva refused to come down, how she go
aded me into retrieving her—stubborn, infuriating citizen. “Her aim isn’t bad, considering. I was impressed.”
Now Efraím does laugh, a full-throated chuckle I’ve rarely heard from him. “You let her throw knives at you from a superior position, in the dark, with no sense of her ability? Fitting, Westergaard, very fitting. The two of you are well-matched indeed.”
I stiffen. “Come again, sir?”
But he turns away from me, still laughing. “That’s Skau’s belt you’ve got strapped over your own, eh, Westergaard?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ah, well. At least you aren’t as much of a fool as that sinner. Bellator Skau, front and center.” He beckons, and the crowd parts. Two of the Thirty bring Skau forward, each gripping one of his arms. He stands there in his smallclothes, weaponless and shivering, his eyes downcast. A streak of dried blood runs from his temple to his chin, evidence of Eva’s assault with the rock. The bellator to his right—Jakob Riis—tosses a shapeless pile of cloth to the ground in front of Skau, where it lands with a splat: Eva’s discarded nightgown.
“Here’s your conquest, girl,” Efraím says. “Do you have anything to say to him before he receives the punishment that’s his due?”
Eva starts to nod, then thinks better of it. Efraím waves his hand, as if he has only just realized I’m holding her at knifepoint. “Let her go, Westergaard. She’s hardly a danger to us.”
That’s what you think. She was a danger to Skau, and very nearly a danger to me as well. But against a force of warriors two hundred strong—well, perhaps Efraím is right. What can she do?
I lower the blade and Eva steps away, throwing me a look of such loathing, I almost take a step back myself. She stalks toward Skau, unarmed and wearing his oversized clothes. She ought to look ridiculous, but she doesn’t.
She looks like a weapon.
“On your knees, Skau,” Efraím demands, and he obeys, sinking down dizzily into the rock-studded dirt. The stones must hurt his knees, but he gives no sign. He stares straight ahead, as if he is seeing something other than the scene unfolding in the clearing. I don’t blame him in the slightest. To be bested by an untrained citizen—a girl, no less—and wind up bladeless and almost naked in front of the brotherhood…I can think of few more humiliating fates.
Eva comes to a halt in front of him, a little more than arm’s length away. Her instincts are excellent, and despite myself, I am impressed. She fills his field of vision, so he has no choice but to look at her. One hand drops to her waist, where she has had to roll the waist of his pants up to make them fit, and with a shock, I realize what she is doing—emphasizing that his clothes are much too big for her. That she took him, despite the disparity in their size and training.
There are some among us who never learn the finer psychological nuances of combat, who have aptitude only for brute force and the blade. You can break a man without laying a finger on him, if you know his mind and heart well enough. Excellent instincts, indeed.
Skau’s eyes refocus on Eva, and in their depths I see the burn of hatred. She has made an enemy this night. But he kneels there and doesn’t move. He knows better.
“Last words, Citizen Marteinn?” Efraím prompts her. He has used her title on purpose—another dig at Skau’s failure to do his duty—and I see a muscle near the kneeling man’s jaw twitch.
Eva takes an infinitesimal step closer, forcing Skau to look up at her. And then her lips lift in a smile of surpassing sweetness. “Thank you for your shirt,” she says. “I really was cold.”
Skau lifts his chin. “Generosity is a Virtue,” he says in his rumbling voice. “Even when coerced. It’s as the master strategist Sun Tzu said: All warfare is based on deception. Tonight, you were the better warrior, Eva Marteinn.”
The words emerge gritty, dragged from his throat—but he says them, and that is enough for Efraím. He turns his attention to the other two recruits, standing silent, dripping wet and filthy, in the curve of the circle.
“Daríus Elison and Hendrik Karsten,” Efraím says. “Your performance in the Trials has been adequate at best. Both of you had to be pulled from the water, whereas Eva Marteinn devised her own rescue. You stand before me soaking wet and in your nightclothes, whereas Citizen Marteinn disarmed a trained bellator and appropriated his gear. She beat you to the top of the cliff, wounded her pursuer, and avoided capture longer than both of you—despite provoking one of our best fighters into hunting her.”
It takes a second to realize Efraím means me. But before I can savor this unexpected compliment, he is off again. “However, you did complete the Trials in the allotted time. We will therefore welcome you into the Bellatorum on a provisional basis, pending your formal recognition in the Choosing Ceremony and your performance during the initial training period.”
Elison and Karsten look pleased to hear this news. If they take offense at being unfavorably compared to Eva, they give no sign. The heavier, blond one inclines his head, fighting back a self-congratulatory smile; the other one, who has a lot to learn about dealing with our head bellator, attempts to curry favor through obsequience. “Thank you, sir,” he says. “I won’t let you down, sir. You’ll see—”
“Silence, Citizen Karsten.” Efraím’s voice rings through the clearing, echoing down into the gorge and out from the trees. The boy chokes on whatever he was going to say next, sputtering into silence. “When I want your opinion, citizen, I’ll ask for it.” His gaze rakes the two of them from head to toe. “Until then, you will be silent. Your mentors will be assigned after the Choosing Ceremony, provided the two of you make it that far. Understood?”
The two of them squeak out a garbled, overlapping version of, “Sir, yes sir!” Efraím ignores them, turning his attention to Eva. I feel my body tense, and will myself to relax. Her fate is of no consequence to me. In fact, I remind myself, the further away from me she is, the better. She is an interference, a distraction I can ill afford. Just look at what happened in the woods.
“Citizen Marteinn,” he says, and Eva snaps to attention, copying the other bellators with eerie exactitude. For someone with such contempt for our kind, she demonstrates rare aptitude and skill.
“Sir,” she says.
“You have performed well tonight, citizen. You’ve exceeded all my expectations. The Bellatorum is honored to welcome its first female recruit into our ranks.”
It’s the nicest thing I’ve ever heard Efraím say to anyone. Hearing it, I feel a harsh, unwelcome pang of jealousy. Eva’s mouth actually falls open in shock before she remembers herself and shuts it, her teeth slamming together with an audible click. “Yes, sir,” she says, each word sharp-edged as a shuriken—a throwing star. “It would be my privilege, sir.”
For the Architect’s sake. “A great privilege,” I say before I can stop myself, “to have amongst our ranks the scourge of shirts and pants everywhere.”
Efraím shoots me a disgusted glance. “Westergaard,” he says. “Meet your new apprentice.”
The air leaves my lungs. “Excuse me, sir. I must have misheard. I thought you said—”
“You misheard nothing, Westergaard. Those are my orders, come down from the Executor himself. Personally, I think it’s brilliant. If ever I met someone who was able to put an end to that smart mouth of yours, this is the one. The Architect knows I haven’t been able to do it.”
I grit my teeth, a thousand objections jammed in my throat. I’m too young. I’m not qualified. I’m still in training myself. What do I know about having an apprentice? All of which pales beside the real reason I can’t be Eva Marteinn’s mentor: When she’s around me, I can’t think. I forget myself. She’ll compromise me. Every day, she will test my commitment and my vows.
Maybe this is the reason for the Executor’s decree.
Over the years, I have come to think of Eva as a challenge, my own personal temptation. What I imagine doing with her is the greatest of sins. Resisting it is good practice for my soul, like sparring with Efraím is good practice f
or my body. Both will keep me alive. But to have her in such close proximity, day after day—that will test my limits, and sorely. I cannot help but wonder if somehow the Executor has foreseen this. Maybe during one of the juniper smoke-induced trances the Bellatorum uses to train us to control our minds as well as our bodies, the interrogators have seen something untoward. Maybe they have made me forget.
I force myself to breathe, my heartbeat to still. The other bellators are all staring at me, predators who will exploit my smallest weakness. Like any pack, we will root out the vulnerable members and expose their soft underbellies. I cannot afford such a thing, especially now. And so I straighten my spine and meet Efraím’s hard gaze. “It would be my honor, sir,” I say.
“Glad to hear it,” he says, and then, pitching his voice louder, “Dismissed.”
The Bellatorum move as one to leave the clearing. I linger with Efraím like I often do, ensuring there are no final duties he needs me to attend to. He nods to me, and I take my leave.
Eva Marteinn stands still, her dark eyes locked on me like a bird of prey’s, but I pay her no heed. Let her find her own way home. I’ll be responsible for her soon enough.
The last thing I see before I fade into the woods is Skau, his back against a pine tree and his eyes fixed in the middle distance, standing stone-cold still as Efraím lances three blades at him in quick succession. They find their marks within seconds, pinning him to the tree by the throat.
It’s a stellar lesson in sidearm, balanced bladework. Not that it makes much difference to Skau. He’s just as dead.
8
Eva
Reykdal Skau died because of me.
Try as I might to spin the situation otherwise—it was a rigged game; I shouldn’t have been able to get the better of him; there was no way for me to know what Bellator Stinar would do—I can’t get Skau’s white, set face out of my mind, nor his torn throat, pouring blood as his eyes dulled, his body kept upright only by the blades that held him to the tree.
