“Bring your swords forward, keep your arms straight, and do not drop them until you’ve been given permission,” Master Chen barks, and each of us does as we’re commanded.
The pit once again goes quiet, and the test starts. We’ll stand on these poles until we can’t stand anymore. One of us will fall first and be punished for it. Others will follow, and a few of us will push ourselves past all limits for the bragging rights of saying we were last. The Order members will watch until they’re bored, and the winner will probably be announced to them when they’ve abandoned us to return to their magically cooled rooms, platters of food, and realm gossip.
I wish I felt more mad than jealous right now. Anger can be fuel, jealousy is draining. Centering my breathing, I do my best to disconnect from my body and float back into my thoughts like they’re a cool pond of water. I imagine I’m weightless as I tear into a juicy leg of succulent meat, pop some sweet berries into my mouth, and chase it all down with a wine that makes me feel alive and unconquerable. I’ve never in my memory feasted on any of these things, and yet it’s as though I can taste them on my very lips like they’re real. I welcome the phantom memories that I can’t quite explain, inviting them to swarm my thoughts and steal me away from my reality for as long as possible.
It’s well past midday when my body demands I surface. Brutally, I’m yanked back into the here and now, my muscles screaming and my foot demanding relief. Looking around, I find all of us still on our perches, but from the look of a few of the others, it won’t stay that way for much longer. I adjust my stance for the first time since we started, turning the hands holding the sword from palm up to palm down. It provides a little relief in some of my arm muscles, which is better than nothing, I tell myself as I very carefully inch one foot over to make room for my other. As I shift my weight at the top of the pole, I notice that the wooden risers are empty.
I want to scoff at the Order members retreating so early, but a familiar stern voice draws my attention, and I track it to a few poles down from mine. Master Chen stands beneath a struggling blade slave, firmly announcing something to all the Order members, who are gathered around. Tilleo is in the back, greedily watching the interaction as a house slave furiously works to fan away the sweat slowly collecting on the master’s brow.
“She’s a passable lock pick and can untangle basic wards. She’s trained with all required weapons, but she excels at the use of a gnome pick for close contact and an assegai for distance. Just like with all blade slaves, she has built a tolerance to most dosable toxins, but she’s shown to remain susceptible to fir flower andsarkarbites. She ranked number one in her enticement training, proving to be quite adept at both male and female satisfaction. Her build is softer than some of the others in this batch, but what she lacks in muscle mass, she makes up for in flexibility. According to Master Dorrow, there isn’t a position that she can’t be bent into, which is a useful skill in its own right.”
Order members nod as they eye Orit like she’s some beast of burden who needs its flanks slapped and its joints bent and tested to ensure they’re sound. Sweat drips down her reddened face, and her arms shake as they battle to remain straight and to hold the sword out in front of her.
Master Chen moves from the base of Orit’s pole to Haryk’s, who seems to be faring slightly better atop his post. His shirt is drenched in sweat and clinging to his body, and even though the tremor in his arms is less visible than Orit’s, I notice a slight sway to his positioning that has me rethinking my assessment. It’s possible Haryk might pass out before Orit does.
Master Chen begins to list Haryk’s stats and efficiencies, and I listen surprised by the detail and observations being made. I probably shouldn’t be shocked by the collection of data the masters have compiled, as the whole pointisfor them to sell us off, but the detail in their observations is unnerving. Just like Orit did, Haryk keeps his head up and his eyes fixed on nothing as Master Chen talks about him like he’s nothing more than a commodity. I wonder what’s going through the blade slave’s head as the Order members are told that he’s advanced at wards but has little patience for the use of poisons, preferring death by beheading even when a more delicate approach would have been preferred.
Sweat drips freely down my body, distracting me from Master Chen’s summary as my attention is once again called to the discomfort peppering every limb. My arms are stiff and solid, the leg I just switched to has turns left in it, and the shirt I wrapped around my head is doing a decent job of keeping the stinging sweat from my eyes. I focus on what’s working and shut down the need to move and stretch my stiff muscles. Once again, I return my focus to the crowd of Order members gathered next to me, which of course is when a giant glamoured wolf head stirs and moves to the side, and my gaze lands directly on the face of a skeleton.
Why can’t I seem to escape their soul-sucking eyes?
Unwelcome heat gathers at my center, but I can’t bring myself to look away. Thanks to their solid glamour, I once again find that I don’t know which of the three he is, but dropping my gaze feels as though I’m offering submission that he doesn’t deserve. His eyes trace a bead of sweat that runs from my neck down between my breasts, setting a steady course over the muscles of my stomach to meet its end in the fabric of my underwear.
My nipples pebble at his attention, a reaction the thin binding at my chest won’t do much to hide, which is just perfect because the whole crowd of Order members is slowly shifting to surround me. I catch a hint of a smile breaking across the skeleton’s face before a gargantuan bearded man steps in front of him, blocking the Scorpion from my sight. It’s probably unwise, but just like I was staring down the skeleton, I decide to stare down what I suspect is a member of the Order of Crows, based on the feathers he has woven into his hair. He dismisses the challenge in my gaze as Master Chen begins to speak, but I chalk a tally in my favor at what I deem is his surrender to me.
“Auset came to us later than the other blade slaves in this batch,” Master Chen starts, and I find myself meeting the eyes of all the Order members surrounding me one by one. “Her late start however has not impeded her skill. In fact, many of the masters have been impressed at the rate this slave took to the conditioning and training. This female excels at any weapon given to her. She once downed an opponent with an empty quiver when the arrows weren’t enough to drop him. She ripped it apart and used the suede to strangle him,” he continues, and the wolf head I’m currently locked eyes with tilts in interest at the master’s words.
“I’d like to see that,” the wolf grumbles, and Master Chen nods as though he’s a djinn that would love nothing more than to grant that wish.
“This blade slave has a mind that matches her advanced weapons skills. She is calculating and instinctive, often downplaying abilities in order to diminish any difficulties that may occur socially from a high rank in the batch,” Master Chen continues.
I want to glare at the master for announcing that to the entire pit of blade slaves, while simultaneously scowling at myself for not realizing that I wasn’t hiding what I was doing half as well as I thought I was.
“It’s important to note that this slave did not undergo enticement training. Instead, an excellent baseline for withstanding torture and punishment was developed over the course of her time here. She has a high tolerance for pain and a body that takes to healing faster and much better than most. Her status as bait ranks higher than any blade slave we’ve seen come out of this ludere.”
My mind stalls at that declaration, and my gaze flashes to Master Chen. Did he really just tell the gathering of the best assassins this realm has ever seen that I should be used as bait to potentially be caught and tortured over and over again, all because my body could heal from it? My eyes narrow at the bastard, and he immediately wraps a hand around the whip coiled at his waist. For the first time, I wonder if Tilleo’s order might be more of a mercy than a condemnation. If my life is destined to be used as bait, there’s no question that death is the better deal.
I glare at the master, suspecting he’s been biding his time, waiting to pay me back for my defiance over the years. The pardon I was ultimately given over the enticement training refusal was never going to slide with the masters, regardless of what Tilleo declared. I just never realized how they were going to make me pay until now. They talked me up, made my abilities desirable, and then laid the path to a lifetime of pain with only a few well-spoken words.
Fuckers.
“Moving on,” Master Chen declares as though my fate is sealed.
My gaze moves to Tilleo, but he’s not looking up at me as he wanders below my post and on to the next. I’m reeling and it takes all the control I can muster to rein in my anger and astonishment. I should have known, and yet I didn’t. My status with the masters changed the day Tilleo refused to wash me from the batch. I thought his word was final, that it protected me in some way, but I’m discovering just how wrong that assumption was. I want to scream at my own stupidity, but thanks to Tilleo, I’ve already accepted that my life was going to end before I ever made it to the final Bidding Day.
They can’t hurt me. Not anymore. Or so I tell myself as I work to fall back into oblivion while my body fights to stay on top of a narrow post, in the scorching sun, with nothing but retribution flowing through my veins.
ChapterTwelve
Anxiety hammers at me as I lean back into the shadows as deeply as the wall at my back will allow. The footsteps that triggered my alarm slowly fall away, but I don’t dare breathe a sigh of relief just yet. I scan the shelves in the alchemy room I’ve snuck into and carefully sort through the ones filled with healing tinctures and herbs until I find the stack of poisons the healers dose the blade slaves with. We’re told that it’s to help us build a tolerance to the common poisons used in the death trade, that it could one day save our lives, but far too many healers and guards seem to enjoy the suffering these innocent looking vials cause. It makes their altruistic claims evaporate right out the window like early morning mist.
The bottles and pouches are all neatly labeled and organized. I’m not supposed to be able to read any of it; the neat scroll identifying each poison isn’t expected to be a threat to the healers and guards who keep us under their thumb, but today it is. I move closer to the shelf, dismissing label after label until I find what I want.
The healers call itpokoyn. I don’t know where it comes from or how it’s collected, but I do know that it causes a horrid wasting sickness if too much is given too fast. It moves slowly, rotting a fae from the inside out, and it kills more than it saves. When my batch was given this in my second year here, it culled more than half of us. I think it’s high time the guards and healers themselves test it out.
I tuck the light yellow vial in the waist of my pants and move gingerly back to the shadows. The poison feels secure enough—I just need it not to break as I step into the shadow that let me in here and back out into the shady hallway on the other side. Casually I stroll out of the healer’s wing, which takes up one whole side of the lower floor of the ludere, and move in the direction of the hashery on the other side.
My heart beats frantically in my chest when I stop and nonchalantly lean against a dark wall like I’m taking in the morning appreciatively. Other blade slaves wander past me, but no one bothers to look my way. It’s early and the main crowd of us is still in their chambers, attempting to steal a few more seconds of sleep before today’s tests begin. I wait until the walkway is empty, and then I crawl through the shadowed wall and into the food storage room at the back of the kitchens.
