“What the fuck is going on here?” Tilleo demands, the bark of his voice making me jump and then immediately bite back the hiss of pain that works to overwhelm me.
“We’re sorry, Tilleo, she was too far gone by the time she was brought to us,” a healer informs him, and I can see him battle the cringe of fear that wants to flash across his face as he awaits the master’s response.
“Too far gone?” he snarls, stomping closer to take in Taria for himself. “Who did this?” he bellows as his cruel carob glower travels from one brutal injury to another and another and another on the small blade slave’s battered body.
Several of the healers look over to the small huddle of house slaves, who are now shaking in the dark, murky corner. One of them steps forward, his eyes fixed on the ground and his hands clutching his bloody tunic as though it’ll give him the strength he needs to speak.
“She was in the south wing, master. She was crawling down the hall,” he announces, his voice frail and wavering and his movements jumpy and unsettled. “There was screaming still coming from the other side of one of the suite doors,” he timidly adds, trailing off as though he hopes nothing more needs to be said.
Tilleo’s back is to me as he stares down at the broken creature on the cot. I can’t see his face, but the way his shoulders tense at the house slave’s words makes it clear that nothing more does need to be said. He knows exactly what’s going on. Calculating eyes snap to mine, and I all at once feel like prey that’s been seen by a hunter and now there’s nowhere for me to escape. I expect him to lash out at me, offended that I’ve looked him in the eye, but he doesn’t. I don’t know if looking away will trigger the violent response he normally has to any kind of eye contact from a slave, so I look on, knowing I’m probably fucked either way.
“Heal her,” Tilleo orders, pointing a stiff finger in my direction.
Four healers stammer their agreement as they rush to my side without question or argument. I don’t dare to break my stare with my master or show him any of the pain that heats my blood to a boiling point as too much magic is forced into me. The quilt of open wounds on my back starts to close up. Sweat collects on my upper lip and brow in the seconds it takes them to reverse the damage done to me earlier. A breath-stealing crack of my ribs is the last thing to hit me as they realign and seal themselves back together. I don’t even know when they were broken.
Job done, healers immediately move away from me, skittering as far as they can from Tilleo’s volatile direct line of sight. Slowly, I sit up, shakily clutching my dirty bloodstained tunic to my chest. Tilleo looks furious, and I wonder for a moment if he’s going to have me whipped again for embarrassing him the way I did at the trial earlier or if he needs a target for his anger right now and I’m here. I know he expects me to paint my features with contrition and cower at his anger, but I don’t have it in me anymore. I’ve been careful and tried to be appropriately meek the majority of my time in this hellhole, and it’s gotten me nowhere. Tilleo hasn’t broken me so far, and no matter what he thinks, what’s gleaming in his eyes right now isn’t going to do it either.
Tilleo glances over at Taria’s body as a healer draws a sheet over her face. His eyes harden even more, and he works to control a confusing flood of emotions that hit entirely too fast for me to interpret, before turning back to me. I wait to hear him demand to know who did this to her, to rage that someone dared break what was his, but instead he levels me with an enraged stare, and it’s all I can do not to shrink away from it.
“It’s time,” he announces as though I should immediately know the plan contained in those two simple words.
I don’t, but my heart picks up regardless, as though it can sense the doom spilling out of the vague instruction. Sinisterly, Tilleo bends down, his mouth inches from my ear so only I can hear what comes next.
“I thought things would come together differently, but this is as good a time as any,” he frostily whispers, and the air around me grows even thicker with malice. “Slave, you will make your way to the south wing of my manor, and you will not leave it until either you or Gartox of the Order of Bruins is dead.”
My heart stutters as understanding skitters over me like starving sand voles. This is it. This is when it all ends for me.
I’m about to die.
I stare at the blank wall of the healing chamber, not sure what to say or do. It feels so different when you see it coming. Life here has always been kill or be killed. But if we were good enough, if we worked hard, it meant we could outrun death for some time. I’ve trained the way the masters wanted, the way Tilleo demanded, and it should have meant that there would be another day and another hunt on the horizon until I was too old and frail to lift a blade anymore. At best, I would earn enough to buy myself and then I could walk away from it all. But it was a lie. I was dead the moment Tilleo set me in the sands of this ludere. I just didn’t know it.
Tilleo steps back, his severe scowl doing its best to shut down the dissension now dripping from my mind into my mouth like sap from a cut tree to the forest floor. I want to tell him no, to slit him from torso to throat for toying with me the way that he has, but I have no weapons. The healers and guards would be on me before I could so much as squeeze one breath out of the bastard with my bare hands. So instead, I do what’s been beaten into me since the day I got here: I drop my eyes and submit.
“I am your blade to command,” I reply, as is expected, and then I push to my feet as though I’m not rising simply to meet my own end.
Tilleo and I stand across from each other, slave and master, master and slave, our places in this world carved into stone as though that’s how it will always be. But I don’t accept that. Not anymore. Tilleo wants death to coat the walls of his manor tonight, fine, but it won’t just be mine or Gartox’s—I’m coming for every single fae that runs this place. I won’t get them all, I know that already, but I’ll end enough of them not to die in vain. Enough to make my tortured and brief life worthsomething.
“Hord, take her to the armory and get her what she needs. Then you will escort her to the southern wing and report back to your post,” Tilleo barks at the familiar guard, who steps forward with a stiff nod.
At that, I’m dismissed, like the insignificant mongrel that Tilleo thinks I am. The master of my fate gives me his back while he speaks with the senior healers in the room. I vow, in this moment, that he’ll regret treating me as though I’m nothing.
Clutching my tattered tunic to my chest, I move to follow Hord out of the healing chamber. Cool desert air caresses me in a way that feels comforting, like the elements themselves are offering their support when there’s none to be found anywhere else in this Kings forsaken place. I’m led out of the ludere and into the quiet of the early hours of the morning. This day is about to wake up to a massacre. The thought makes me feel lighter.
I’m surprised at first when Hord heads in the direction of the stables. I consider for a fleeting moment that he might try to help me escape. Hord has watched over the ludere in some way or another my entire time here; could he feel pity over everything that’s happened and want to help? Then I realize that he’s not taking me to the stables, but to the guard’s barracks just on the other side. He’s guiding me to the guard’s armory for weapons. When Tilleo ordered him to arm me with whatever I needed, I pictured the room in the ludere where we pick up weapons to train with. But given what I’ve been tasked to do, I should have known that Tilleo wouldn’t want rusted swords and dull spears for this hunt. He wants death done right this time.
I shiver as we make our way across the warm sand. My body is exhausted, and my muscles feel battered and tight with tension. I want to stop and stand with my face tilted back to the waning moon so it can really work its magic on me, but each moonlit-soaked step helps me feel stronger, more fortified. I have no idea what my connection to the celestial body is. When I was younger, I used to think that I must be from the Night Court and therefore the moon is looking out for me when there’s no one else who can. Then I grew up and realized I must have some kind of affinity for it, but who knows if that’s true or what it could mean.
The mystery barely plagues me anymore. I realized a long time ago that there’s no point wondering or trying to figure it out when it wouldn’t change anything. I was a blade slave, I was trapped, and no sudden flash of memory or understanding was going to change that fact.
Hord pushes a door open that leads into the building, and ushers me inside. The barracks are steeped in quiet, the late hour wrapping everything around me in a thick blanket of calm and peace. I try to absorb it as I step into a large room with rows and rows of weapons fixed to the walls, and racks and crates full of more set off to one side. Hord disappears through a doorway to the right. After a minute or so of the distinct sound of rustling fabric, he reappears with a gray guard’s tunic. I take it, showing him my back as I drop my soiled, useless top to the ground and pull the new one over my head. It’s a little big, so I grab a dagger and cut a slit in the front of the fabric up to my stomach and then wrap the tails of the top around my back, tying them off at my front just above my pants.
“There’s armor in there too. I wasn’t sure what would fit you,” he offers, not his usual jovial ass-slapping self. He’s probably gleaned what I’m here to do, or maybe my pokoyn plan has started to work.
Hord does something to the fairy light sconces, and they brighten, allowing me to see the metal and hardened leather options hanging on long racks in the other room. I squeeze my hands into fists once and then relax them, only allowing myself that small show of emotion before I shut it down and focus. It’s tempting to kit myself out in everything, to adorn myself in so much protection that nothing could get through, not even death, but I know that will just delay the inevitable and mess with my range of motion.
I reach for a leather chest guard, waving away Hord when he steps forward to help me get it on. I’m not some spoiled guard who requires help, I’m a blade slave. No one does this shit for us. It makes me think of the Scorpions as I carefully tighten the laces at the side until the leather molds to me as much as it can. It was made for a male, but every other piece of armor I’ve ever worn was too; I’m used to working around it. The Kings know, if I ever got a kit that actually fit, I’d have to retrain completely and figure out how to fight and kill without the bulky mass of male armor in my way.
Guess I’ll never know.
