Page 7 of Grimdark Magazine Issue 48

But the memories of my other tortures didn’t help me here. Being branded hurt like all the glories of hell, so-called. The burn didn’t sink inside me, though. I wouldn’t allow it. The pain of the brand took hold in my skin, but that was all.

After the seventh iron had been pulled away, Jaimen’s eyes narrowed with slight suspicion. After a long moment, he nodded with satisfaction, and said matter-of-factly, in his thick Mal accent, “Next, branding.”

The brand I’d just received was just the mark of completing my first cruciation. Jaimen was reminding me that the next three months would be a cruciation of hot iron.

He then left me alone as he’d always done, to rest a few moments before I’d be escorted back to my room.

I let go of the pegs, unwinding my tension like a weaver loosening his loom. The angry scar on my chest had risen, white, forming the numeral I knew, with some appended serifs I did not. Around it, patches of red and black. I fought the urge to accelerate healing in the skin, too. I’d need all my strength for tomorrow’s session, when the branding would begin in earnest. Over the next hundred days, a new pattern would be burned into my skin. I didn’t know where, or what that mark would signify. But it would likely be broader, hurt more.

Silent gods, burned. Over and over. In the same place. Every day.

And while I didn’t know what sigil they’d scar me with, the repetition itself was symbolic, reflecting the challenge to meet day after day beneath a hard sun. A succession of Mal suns. The routine of it maddening. Because while Talenfoier described these focused sessions of torture, it also represented—for the Mal—a way of living. Their routine was Talenfoier. Their routine was constant pain as an ever-present reminder of mortality. Their routine made them stoic, hard. Exceptional at war, which seemed just another routine to them.

For me ... my routine was about to change.

I arrived back at my small room, supported by one of the refiner helpmates I’d come to call gray men. I’d never heard one speak, or even make non-verbal sounds in their throats. They wore shapeless clothing of an indistinct gray color, and walked with constant attention on where and how they placed their next step. This gray man saw me to my bed, then left in a prompt but unhurried fashion.

When my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I found myself staring at a young woman lying across from me on my room’s second bed. She looked all of eighteen, if I was any judge of age. At the foot of her bed sat a small trunk and a pair of shoes. The Aerin Loh had assigned me a roommate. I was dizzy still, so I didn’t fully trust my eyes, but the girl’s face looked like it had been taken to with a pair of brass hands. As had much of the rest of her naked, trembling body.

I wanted to go to her. Wrap a wool blanket around her thin shoulders. But I was too weak even to do that.

When the hours of night had grown small, I awoke to the sound of her near-silent sobs.

I said nothing, lying still for quite a long time. I took in the shape of her, the wounds I could make out through the shadows. And knowing what it would mean for me the next morning, I rendered a portion of myself and added some strength to her form. Just enough to dull the aches of blood bruises, mend ripped skin, and true up a jutting bone. And that much left me entirely depleted.

The woman drew a deep, sleepful breath, returning our room to the peace of the small hours. I soon followed her to dreams.

* * *

The still, mild air of summer morning had settled in around me. I sat just beyond the rear door of the small house where I passed my nights in Darles Hem. Hem was a Mal city nestled in amidst a long run of hillocks. It was unremarkable save, maybe, the excellence of its refiners at Talenfoier. But it had good mornings. Great mornings.

The air had a dry quality to it. Not desert-like, but not humid. I neither burned nor perspired in the heat. Ground dew was enough to freshen the smell of shrubs and leaves, without leaving them damp. And hill aspen rose everywhere, some spreading their branches above me. Aspen leaves were the gods’ way of laughing—their flutter in even a mild breeze like the sound of a smile. Sunlight streamed through those leaves, their shadows dancing across my legs.

I could smell parsley growing in moist earth nearby. And mint. They were clean smells that made the morning that much more pleasant. I’d slept fitfully, even after assisting the girl, pain flaring in my skin each time I rolled or stretched. So, now I dozed in the calm of this rear garden. Civil, I thought. This feels civil. Even if the moment was fleeting.

I closed my eyes and smiled. My prison here wasn’t piss-covered stone and rusting chains and dirty straw to wipe my ass. I’d known such places. Here, my prison was weariness. Day in, day out: Talenfoier. I had strength enough to endure each hour, and little more. No guard stood at my door. No bed checks or restraints. When my strength permitted, I was even allowed to walk the city. But the pain of cruciation and the weariness that followed were constant fetters.

All I had to distract myself were these soft morning moments. They restored me more than anything else. There was even a small hare that foraged a patch of cabbage laid in near the rear fence. I’d come to think of it as a pet. I called him “Amen.” I took no small pleasure watching Amen move about, all twitchy-nosed.

This morning, Amen was working at a snip of parsley when footsteps sent him scurrying down a hole. I opened my eyes, and saw first a set of bare feet. Looking up, my roommate came into view. She sat in a chair a few paces away, her legs likewise bare. Beside her chair, she laid a pair of ankle-high shoes she’d been carrying. She’d draped a loose shirt around her shoulders, but nothing more. Her breasts cast half-moon shadows across her ribs.

We sat, unspeaking, for several long moments. Finally, she broke the silence, her voice husky as from overuse. “Why are you here?”

I pulled up my own loose shirt to expose my first brand.

She shook her head. “Why have you come here?”

I gave a weak smile. The only kind I felt capable of. “I’m Vendanj. And I’m sorry, but what’s your name?”

“Yes, rude of me. Seelia,” she answered.

“Well, Seelia, are you interested for yourself, or for someone else?” I then pointed to her exposed breasts. “No brand. You’ve not started your Talenfoier.” I wondered if she’d prove to be a cell-mate confidante, the kind meant to garner trust by shared misery, extract information for a jailor. It was a clumsy device.

Her return smile pulled at the cracks in her lips. She winced a bit. “Talenfoier starts at birth.”

“For a Mal, you mean.”

“For living things,” she replied, no hint of sarcasm.