I don’t know how long I lay there, my cheek pressed against the cool floor, staring at Dorsin’s dead eyes and the taunting open window. The sun is high in the sky when the first booming knock sounds at the white-oak doors. The skeleton’s words loop through my mind in a jeering round, and I don’t even stir when the demanding pounding comes again.
“You’re better off dead.”
Feet attached to leather-clad legs spill into the space before me. I don’t flinch or have the wherewithal any longer to fear anything as I watch Dorsin’s people take in the macabre scene. I’m as blank inside as my mind has been when trying to piece together thewhyof all this. Voices shout and argue, but I focus on nothing until a pair of pristine black boots step into my line of sight. I take in the freshly oiled surface of the footwear, stiffening when I spot a small skull pressed into the silver of the buckle that cinches the wearer’s ankle.
What pain and horror will this pair bring me?
In a burst of speed I didn’t know I was capable of, I lunge at the owner of the boots. Surprise flashes in his assessing gaze as he scrambles away. Just as I lift an orc dagger, a snarl of victory now climbing up my throat, my chains stop me, snapping me back and out of reach of the man I want to cut to ribbons. I stare at him, studying his face for the features that I earlier made out behind the skeletal glamour, but the aristocratic cheeks and the full lips are nowhere to be found in this fae’s face.
His carob-hued eyes take me in, settling on the fae blood streaked and spattered over my skin, before moving to the orc remains now dried in my hair and stuck to my hands. He looks almost impressed for a moment before he shutters all readable emotion from his face.
“I’m Tilleo, Dorsin’s second-in-command,” he announces, jutting his chin in the direction of his dead former leader. “It seems as though you’ve beenbusyin here,” he observes, his dark eyes raking down my gore-painted body.
Fighting back a shiver of revulsion at the dark gleam in his gaze, it dawns on me that he thinksIdid all of this. I drop my gaze to the pools of blood, both green and red, all around me and then look back up at Tilleo. I don’t correct his assumption. I can’t tell if he’s pleased with me or plotting how to make me suffer for what he thinks I’ve done. I wait for the fear to come, but I’m too empty for it to find purchase if it does decide to show up.
“Who are you?” he asks, tilting his head a little as though it will offer him recognition.
I debate whether to answer, but maybe he knows who I am. Maybe he holds the answers I desperately need. “Auset,” I finally offer, clinging tightly to the only thing I know.
I watch him carefully, looking for any sign that my name means more to him than it currently does to me. His face is blank.
“You want me to put her with the others headed to market?” a thin, reedy fae asks.
Tilleo watches me for a moment and then another before a small smile spreads over his face. “No. No flesh market for this one. I think we can find a much better use for her...talents,” he states, his eyes aglow with menace. “Put her with the other savages. Let’s see what she can really do.”
ChapterThree
SIX YEARS LATER
Isit back in the tepid water, the hard edge of the metal tub digging into my newly healed and now lash-free back. I daydream about the day that I can shove a sword through Master Vilde’s chest. He whips me for looking at him and now whips me for not looking at him. There’s no reasoning with the bastard, not that there’s much reasoning with many of the animals that run this place. I weave the threadbare washrag between my fingers, getting lost in my bloodthirsty thoughts and the fluid movement of the cloth through the murky water of my bath before whispers lure me from my wandering fantasies.
“I want a place with the Vulpi, but the Wolves would be a good fit too,” Paryn murmurs quietly to Sennet as she scrubs her arms with her own hole-pecked square of fabric.
“I don’t care who claims me as long as it’s not the Bruins,” Linae declares, water sloshing over her metal tub as she turns to look at Paryn and Sennet, wanting to get in on the banter.
“You’ll be claimed by no one if you keep chirping instead of scrubbing,” Hord snaps from the doorway, and the bathing room is once again filled only by the sounds of frantic scrubbing and splashes of water.
I stand, the cloudy water sluicing off of me as I step out of the metal basin and ring my hair out. I can feel the buzz of excitement and nervousness floating in the atmosphere today against my skin, like static from an impending storm. I wish I knew how to feel about it all, but I don’t. We’ve spent years preparing for this day, and it doesn’t seem quite...real. I worry any second now that I’ll startle awake and realize this is all some vivid dream. That everything I’ve been through, all the training and torture and fighting isn’t over, and I’m right back at the start of it all.
A sharp pain strikes through my palm, and I flinch and look down. I expect to find some forgotten wound the healers didn’t notice, but all I see is calluses and lines. There’s no cut or wound of any kind. I fist and unfist my hand against the phantom sting, a habit that will get me slapped if one of the masters catches me doing it. We’re allowed no tics or coping mechanisms outside of what we carefully construct in our minds. Our bodies have been built to be smooth, strong, and unscarred thanks to the proficient healers Tilleo employs, and not because each of us hasn’t been beaten within an inch of life and then brought back day after day. We’ve been poisoned, brutalized, trained, and honed, all in preparation of this...the Bidding. Today is the start of it all. The day when the finest members of the Orders of Assassins come to see which of us is worthy and which of us is only destined for the skin trade we’vemostlybeen spared while coming up through theludere.
I sigh, finger combing through my long hair in hopes it will free up some of the tangles and Wilik’s braiding won’t feel like the rending it usually resembles. Muffled grunting can be heard through the beige sandstone wall in front of me, which means the blade slaves in the male’s bathing room are either brawling or fucking. It’s impossible to say which. I learned long ago that there isn’t much difference in the sounds made while in agony versus what comes out of our mouths in the throes of passion. Not that I know much about the passion side of things.
An occasional romp with a fellow blade slave barely scratches the itch let alone broaches anything resembling passion, at least not for me. I have heard some of the girls make each other scream just as loudly under the covers at night as they do in the ring with a sharp weapon and a deep cut. I know passion is possible. I’ve even been invited a couple of times to discover what all the fuss is about, but I don’t get close to many of the slaves here. It’s always a death sentence just waiting to be meted out, one way or another.
I stand in the bathing room, the stale, arid air working to dry me as I look around. I study the once white marble tiles at my feet, the snowy color now stained yellow by the sulfur in the water they pump in here for us to wash with. The sixteen metal tubs set in rows of four are rusted, the soap so acidic it eats through the tin the same way it’ll eat through skin if left on for too long. It smells like mildew and anxious exhaustion in here, and as happy as I am to never see this room again after the Bidding is over, it’s also all I’ve ever known. Something about that tugs at my gut in a way I never anticipated. It’s not sadness or longing, but unease. I’ve spent a long time waiting to be free of this desert prison, but I can’t help the worry that courses through me that what comes next might be worse.
I’ve never allowed myself to think about that before; there was no point when I didn’t even know if I’d ever see this day. I’ve been careful about allowing my mind to wander down any path that leads too far into the future. But I can’t seem to fend off morose thoughts today. Not when the possibility ofworseis breathing down my neck like a handsy guard after a night of too much drinking.
Eight elite houses of killers will arrive at the ludere this afternoon. We’ll wait on them hand and foot while also working to prove to them that we’re worthy of their Order. Some are better than others. Some are more brutal and punishing, like the Order of Bruins. Others are more refined and sleek, like the Order of Vulpi. Every blade slave has a secret hope for where they’ll end up, but hope is all it is, and in a place like this, hope can kill you faster than anything else.
I stride out of the bathing room, ignoring Hord when he slaps my ass as I pass him. The crack of his palm against my damp skin is loud, but I keep my head straight and my glare to myself. There’s no point getting whipped twice in one day. He takes liberties, but he’s not as bad as he could be. Enduring his attention quietly keeps me off the radar of the bigger predators, the ones who like a fight or a fair amount of screaming in order to enjoy themselves thoroughly.
I step into the adornment room, and Figg grunts at me and nods to the stool in front Wilik. I obey, silently sitting as Wilik starts to roughly comb through my damp hair. It’s warm in here with only two small slivers of windows to allow any airflow. It’s still early, and the sun hasn’t been beating against the walls of the smaller room all day, allowing the thick humid air to still feel tolerable, but only just.
Wilik mans her usual corner with her chair, which she barely troubles herself to leave, and a stack of shelves attached to the wall next to her that she keeps her tools and products on. She forces all of us to sit on a wobbly stool that’s far too small and then punishes us anytime it moves. Figg flutters about behind her long splinter-ridden table, pulling clothes and other things from the shelves and drawers behind her and arranging them in neat little stacks. The table is covered in piles of blue fabric and accessories, and Figg grumbles just as soon as my eyes land on the display.
“Don’t want to hear no fuss about your togs tonight. I spent half the day scrubbing and mending what the masters picked out. So just keep your groans to yourself, or I’ll have you whipped after the feast, and I won’t call the healer until morning,” Figg threatens, shaky fingers pushing wayward salt-and-pepper strands of hair from her sweaty, pink-cheeked face. She must be low on drink today—that’s usually the key to her temper—or perhaps it’s all the fuss over who’s arriving and what they’re here to do over the next handful of days.
