“Cuts and bruises. I think her throat is the worst. He strangled her,” I whispered hoarsely, the tears I couldn’t shed in front of my mother breaking free in front of my twin.
Erix wrapped his arms around me under the thin blanket as I sobbed as quietly as I could. Mitera may have called me her defender, but Erix was the one who kept us alive.
“I-I gave her the last of the pain medicine. We need to find more,” I said, my tears finally slowing.
Erix nodded. His face was like a mirror image of my own, except while my hair was black with a white stripe, his was white with black. We weren’t identical, but we were very close.
“The healer is supposed to be back tomorrow. I’ll see if I can trade something for it,” he said.
There was a healer who lived in the palace who would trade gold, jewelry and fine clothing for drugs that helped the King’s slaves endure his attentions. Some of those drugs deadened the pain. Some of them deadened the mind. Both were in high demand in the King’s household. My brother was the one who usually handled trading our meager belongings for vitally needed supplies.
“We don’t have anything left to trade, Erix,” I said. I glancing around the room at our spartan surroundings. Mitera slept in a small alcove, but Erix and I slept on pallets on the floorof the room. A single outfit of clothes that were too small for either of us hung on a nail in the cracked plaster. The pants were too short but they were all we had. The shirts had holes in the front and back, and the battered shoes were held together with duct tape.
The King sometimes gave his favorites gifts, especially at the birth of a child, but mother had been Called to him less and less as the years passed. We had sold the last of her jewelry the previous year to buy the medicine we used to try to save Eila.
Little Eila had been the spitting image of Mitera. Her dark hair and gold-green eyes had smiled up at us from the floor where she would happily play with anything in sight. She had been three when the fever struck. I would never be able to erase the memory of her tiny, lifeless body when Mitera brought her home from the infirmary.
The King hadn’t Called Mitera to serve since Eila had died. On one hand, not being Called was a blessing, because Mitera wasn’t coming home beaten and bleeding. On the other, it meant we had no way to purchase the medicine she needed when the King treated her like this. As slaves, we were told to consider ourselves fortunate that we were given food and a roof over our heads.
“I’ll figure something out,” Erix said, a look of grim determination on his face. He seemed paler than before and swallowed hard. I suspected some of the things my brother had done to “figure something out” in the past, and they were not good things.
I let it go. Erix was the schemer. The tactician. Erix charmed people. He manipulated, cajoled, and even coerced when necessary. He was charismatic, and would charm secrets out of others; gathering them like a spider gathers flies. He used them to keep us as safe as possible.
Growing up in the shadow of the palace and being akatharmata, or bastard of the king, we were treated oddly. Not exactly normal slaves, but certainly not free. We were easy targets for the other slaves to vent their anger, but no one dared kill us because the wrath of the king could be monstrous. By the King’s law, only he was permitted to fuck a slave, so it was assumed all offspring of the household were his. In reality, without a DNA test, no one knew who the father of a slave was. Nor did they really care unless the child demonstrated the Elusian ability to suppress Mageian powers. Only then would they be tested to verify paternity.
According to the law, if they were the King’s child, they might become an heir. Slave-born heirs were second only to his lawful children of his body that were Elusian. So the hierarchy was a true-born Elusian, a bastard Elusian, then human children. The King didn’t have any Elusian heirs yet, legitimate or bastard, though several of us would be coming of an age that we might develop them soon. It was a race to see who matured first.
In the meantime, we existed in between. We worked like slaves, could be beaten like slaves. Our only hope for freedom was developing the Elusian Suppression ability.
As I fell asleep, I dreamed about what it would be like when Erix and I developed our Elusian powers. I dreamed about the food, the money, the power it would bring us. I dreamed of the jewels and gifts I would give our mother, of how we would make her smile. I would make sure that no one ever hurt her again. I missed her smile so much. I hadn’t seen it since Eila died. We just had to survive long enough to develop those powers.
Most children developed their powers around twelve or thirteen years of age, so we hopefully only had two or three years left of this hell.
And then, I would kill the King.
???
Mitera was better the next day, though stiff and bruised. She bore a necklace of purple and red marks, but she had insisted she was able to work. She knew if she did not work, we did not eat.
We went about our daily chores, Erix and I, performing our daily tasks morning and evening, and schooling in between. Since the Alexandrians hadn’t developed a DNA test to tell who was human, Mageian or Elusian, they had to assume that any of us could become an heir and trained us all accordingly.
That meant hours of classes on religion, language, history, strategy, mathematics, politics, and everything else under the sun. We had numerous tutors who came to the palace and taught us a variety of subjects.
Erix and I were both excellent students, though in different subjects. I excelled in math, history, language, and physical education. In hand-to-hand combat, I could out fight almost any other child my age, and even many who were older.
Erix excelled in politics and military strategy, and his ability to hit a mark with a blade, bow or firearm was already legendary in the palace. He routinely played chess against our strategy instructors and won almost every time.
Every year an examination was held to demonstrate performance in both physical and scholarly pursuits. Those who did well were rewarded. Those who did poorly were punished.
The King watched the performance of all his children, and everyone knew it. From time to time, I would spy the King watching Erix from the balcony that surrounded the practice yards or would feel his heavy stare like an itch on the back of my own neck. He would sometimes walk through the classroomswhen we were reciting our lessons or undergoing examinations. He never spoke directly to any of us, just appeared as a tall, menacing presence. He would sometimes give directions to our tutors or instructors, but never said a word to the children who were supposed to be his.
A few months had passed since Mitera’s last summons from the King, and I was worried about her. She hadn’t been eating. I’d seen her vomiting in the mornings and she was losing weight. Her always pale skin had developed a translucence that wasn’t hidden by the ragged clothing we were forced to wear.
Even more than her physical appearance, the inner fire that had driven her for so long seemed to have been snuffed out. The videos the King had shown her haunted her dreams. She regularly woke from nightmares begging the King not to kill “them”. She refused to tell us who she was referring to.
Mitera didn’t speak often of her life in Illyria, for reasons she refused to explain, so neither Erix nor I knew who the person might be that she was trying to save in her dreams. A lover? A mother, brother, or father? She had mentioned her mother previously, but she wouldn’t tell us, so there was no way to know for sure.
Erix had traded something with the healer for medicine to help her stomach, though he wouldn’t tell me what he traded. I suspected my brother had begun stealing to provide extra food and medicine for us. I feared for his safety, because even a child of the King’s household could lose a hand if caught stealing.
