TWENTY YEARS PRIOR…

Every day was the same, and every day she wept for her mother and tried to convince herself this was all a dream. Just a bad dream. But the Master was relentless, his words every bit as sharp as the stinging pain of each memory of home.

Home.

Dorja rose from her bed along with the other children. The room smelled of dust, wet mildew, and sweat. How many children had been here before her? How many more would come after?

They all rose with the three-note whistle that came from the disc drone, which drifted into their room at the crack of each dawn. First, they put on their sashes and tied their rope sandals. Nidanya was Dorja’s assigned kotika (big sister), and the taller brunette human walked in front of all the girls and boys, inspecting their uniforms, making sure they were prepared for the day’s chores, exercises, and studies. If the younger students were not adequately prepared, it was Nidanya who was punished the worst. The harshest punishments were reserved for the elder students who failed to show sufficient discipline. Once satisfied, Nidanya would shout, “Hoy tut!” Dorja didn’t know what hoy tut meant, but it never failed to send the children running from the room.

They started with a few warm-up exercises, just to get the blood pumping. Usually, the moon Lara was out, traversing the sky at breakneck speed, her green, cratered surface always watchful of the children. They had to be ready to go by the time Lara disappeared behind the Old Man. Then, they would begin their run, across the alien grass that chittered and swayed unlike any grass Dorja had ever seen on her homeworld. They across hardpan roads and up steep inclines. They had to run to the Old Man, the tallest hill between their temple and the Hath Mountain Range. Each of the children had to claw their way to the summit and ring the bell before running back down and into the courtyard, where Master Jerrod and the senior students were assembled. Disc drones hovered over their heads, recording their progress, silent judges.

Dorja and the other children were put through the forms of tan jekk. The older kids were taken to one side and shown advanced forms, and once they had learned those, they would return to their younger siblings and oversee their basic training.

Each day was like this.

Dorja was quiet. She did as she was told. She was the only non-human among them and she stood out. They sometimes stared at her, steered clear of her, and never invited her to eat with them. If she approached their tables, they got up and walked away. When she tried speaking to them, her raspy-singsong voice made them cringe, and so she stopped talking. Secretly, she had decided she would never learn their awful NewGal language. Privately, begrudgingly, she knew that she would have to become at least familiar with it.

At night, she thought of her mother, and she wept. Then the sun came up and she went for a run up the Old Man as Lara sailed across the sky and disc drones chased her and she came back down and trained her forms. Day in, day out. Master Jerrod barely spoke to her except to correct her technique. She felt alone. And lonely. She dreamed of her homeworld, the valley, her people. And she wept.

This went on for several years.

* * *

“What is discipline?” Master Jerrod asked one evening by the lake. A storm was approaching, dark clouds were moving in from the east and a cool, damp wind pushed her hair around.

Dorja sat cross-legged, weeping hands on her knees, reaching hands extended out from her body, elbows slightly bent, shoulders relaxed. Her eyes were not closed but her focus was expanded, taking in the glittering lake in front of her, and the darkling sky reflected in it. Thunder rolled in the east, a promise from the Sky Gods. Lara was racing overhead, vanishing into those black clouds, and the sun was a molten ingot on the horizon. “Discipline?” she asked.

“Yes,” the Master said. “Define it for me.” He paced around her. Dorja could only see his large, booted feet as they pressed prints into the loose soil around the lake’s edge. His messer sword, the Master’s preferred blade, was sheathed at his left hip, the tip of the pearl-encrusted scabbard almost grazing the ground.

“Discipline is when Dorja performs her duties,” Dorja said. “It’s when a person obeys the rules and follows their Oath, even when no one is watching.”

“Insufficient. What is discipline?”

Dorja took a deep breath. The Master wanted to see patience, something she lacked. He’d thwacked her over the head to remind her that it was her least adorable attribute. “Discipline is…it is doing your duties, even when there is no reward?” She winced, wishing she hadn’t made it into a question.

“Insufficient. What you’re talking about is morality,” Jerrod said with a sigh, and paced around her so that she could not see him. Dorja kept looking at Lara’s reflection in the lake ahead of her. “What is discipline? Think. How would you define it?”

“Dorja defines discipline as…” Dorja shook her head. She wasn’t good at these games, but the Master liked to play them. She often felt embarrassed, dumb. It was like he enjoyed tormenting her.

“I’ll give you a hint,” he said. “Discipline is not what everyone thinks it is.”

“Discipline is…” She groped for a thought. Any thought to please him. “Discipline is when you do what must be done, no matter the pain to oneself.”

Master Jerrod went silent for a time. He didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. She wondered if he had left. At last, he said, “Interesting that you keep repeating the same thought, only with different words. You’re talking about morality and self-determination. Close cousins to discipline, but not discipline.” He paced around to where she could see his boots again. Dorja had looked at those boots for years now, had counted every lace, memorized the unique way he knotted them, noticed with each passing month how a new scuff mark appeared, some new break or tear. And yet the Master still wore them. He never looked for new ones. “When you meditate, you’re supposed to ask yourself these questions, and determine the answers for yourself. It sounds as if you haven’t been—”

“Dorja has done exactly as the Master has—”

“Discipline is not practiced when you do something,” Jerrod explained, that note of grudging patience in his voice. “It is practiced when you don’t do something. It is when you deny yourself a moment of laziness, deny yourself a bad diet, deny the pleasure of a moment’s rest. Discipline is not this and it is not that. Understand? Discipline when you don’t quit. When you don’t give in.”

“Give in to what?”

He bent so that his lips were next to her ears. “Anything that would divert you from the Path.”

A light went on. “Dorja understands,” she said brightly. She actually did. This made sense to her. While living in the valley with her mother, much had gotten done by not wasting time with senseless games. Prepping the house for winter was accomplished by not playing too much, and hunting down and killing game was accomplished by not being impatient, not forgetting to mask her scent, not skipping any pre-hunt routine. Dorja and her mother had plenty of food stored for winter because Dorja did not ditch her chores to play with friends. So, what Master Jerrod said made sense.

“Good,” said the Master. “It is good that you understand. Because in the days to come you will go without. You will not have this and you will not have that. And you will need to maintain discipline throughout. For now, though, you must follow me.”

“Where are we going?”

“Off-world.”

* * *

The planet was Regia, a place of vast, arid plains and deserts. Endless blue skies arced over the world, another thin skein of atmosphere that was trapping in a dying biome. The desert stretched out before them, vast, meaningless, devoid of hope. And yet they walked on. It was several days’ worth of traveling away from the spaceport. Dorja’s feet grew calluses. The sun beat down on them angrily, she felt sweat pulled from her pores. At almost all hours, slate clouds piled high on the far horizon and grumbled like titans in deep discussion about something.

The Master did not speak much during their trip. He ran her through her forms in the morning, sparred with her at noon, and stretched with her just before bed. They came to a town called Seblec, where they were able to rent a guide and a pair of khulls; big, smelly reptiles that the locals sometimes used to cross the Jagged Plain.

Dorja did not ask what they were going to do. She had learned long ago to stop asking, that if she needed to know, the Master would tell her.

They stopped for a night in a town called T’iin W’aan. Master Jerrod said he would like a good meal, not the rations they had been subsisting on for days. Dorja looked around the place with misgivings. Her reaching hands handled her food and utensils, while her weeping hands kept their grip on the small training glaive at her side. A few people gave her queer looks. Her blue flesh and face paint would have been enough to single her out, but the extra set of arms even drew looks of revulsion.

She tried to look busy eating her food. Tried to make it look like nothing bothered her.

Master and Apprentice were sitting in silence when the would-be robber walked in, looking skittish. He was armed. Dorja noticed him first. A skinny human with long limbs, tall, his black hair wild and unkempt. Part of his scalp was scarred and hairless, and it looked like a piece of it had been torn away by an old bullet wound. A close shave. Yet here he was. There was a pistol strapped to his side. A few others obviously noticed him but said nothing. Master Jerrod saw him, and his eyes followed the young man as he sipped from his drink.

“Don’t do anything. Don’t say anything,” the Master said.

“He’s trouble,” Dorja said.

“He’s lost.”

“What do you mean?”

The Master took another sip of his coffee and looked out the window to his left, out at the darkening city of T’iin W’aan, a settlement that had grown up around an old military outpost on this desert world. Refugees from Doomed worlds had come here in droves over the last century, and its population was blooming.

The Master appeared to be contemplating something. The pensive look on his face might have meant he was pondering the legacy of this world. The Master might have been thinking about the dry weather, might’ve been recalling a childhood memory. He might’ve been doing any of those things. What her Master was really doing, though, was looking at the young man’s reflection in the window. He watched the young man take his seat, watched him fidget with something on his shirt, a necklace or something, and run a hand through his wild hair.

“He walked in here with lies,” Master Jerrod said, and took a bite of his eggs. “Lies someone else told him. Maybe a father, maybe a mother, or maybe a brother or a cousin he looked up to. Somebody lied to him.”

“What do you mean?” Dorja asked. Her fork was poised over her food, but she could not think about eating, not while her mind was focused on the troublesome young man.

“In a short moment, that young man is going to have to make a decision. Either he will do what he came here to do, rob us all, maybe kill someone to make a point…”

“Or?”

The Master drew a napkin from his side and wiped food from his beard. “Or he will make the right decision, and stand up and go back to whatever rathole he calls home.”

Dorja looked nervously over at the young man. One of his legs was bouncing up and down nervously. “Which do you think it will be?”

“Which do you think it will be?”

She thought about it. “Dorja has no way of knowing.”

“Yet you ask me. Why should I know these things?”

“Because you always know.”

“Do I? Or do I only pretend?” He gave a small smile, then took on a serious look. “When the boy stands up, ready your blade, but do not attack him. Let me handle it.”

“Handle what? He has a plas-pistol at his side, Master.”

“Let me handle it, Dorja. Understood?”

“But he has a—”

“Everybody down on the floor!”

The young man had launched himself from his seat and took his plas-pistol and aimed it around the diner. A woman screamed. Several people gasped. Someone ran for the door and made it out. Everyone else complied and went to the floor, either slowly or fast, depending on their pride and uncertainty.

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Dorja grabbed her glaive in her weeping hands and sank to one knee. Master Jerrod looked like he was about to do the same…until he stood up and took two steps towards the young man.

“Don’t move, oldfather!” the young man snarled. He aimed his pistol at Master Jerrod and stared balefully at him. “Stay right where you are! I want the money! You hear me?” He shouted over to the small, hunched old man behind the counter, “Do you hear me?!”

“Yes. I…I hear you,” said the old man, eyes widen, staring into the barrel of an ancient plas-pistol, which could melt his skull and his brains into mulch.

“Then do as I say! Now!”

The old man moved to obey.

“You don’t want to do this, son,” said Master Jerrod.

“Yeah? Says who, oldfather?”

“Says you. Says your conscience.”

“You don’t know me,” the young man said, and stepped over to the man behind the counter and shoved his plas-pistol into the man’s face. “Move it! You hear me?” He turned his gun on the patrons, waved it around. “The rest of you, throw out your purses, your spare dah’ms, all of it!”

The old man behind the register trembled, dropped some money, and bent to pick it up. Patrons watched in fear, and some tossed out all that they had. Long had it been since anyone had seen a handgun of any type, and no one wanted to find out if it still worked.

Dorja watched with mounting fear. Her glaive quivered in her weeping hands and she was unsure what the Master wanted her to do. He had told her to stay, and yet she felt compelled to back him up. But she had never been in a real fight, never tested her blade against—

“I said stay back, oldfather!” the young man screamed, aiming the pistol back at Master Jerrod, who had taken another step forward.

“I wonder, what lies did they tell you?”

“What lies? What are you—?”

“The people who put that gun in your hand. The people who told you the First Lie.”

“I put this gun in my hand, old man!”

“You may have bought it, you might have stolen it, you might even have come here on your own volition, but someone lied to you first. Who was it? How many years ago was it?”

The young man snorted out a laugh. “You’d better get your head on straight, grayhair. You’re not going to speak to me like I am your son!”

“I am not speaking to you as a father, but as a researcher. I want to know which steps brought you here. Think back. Carefully, now. Think back to what you were thinking just before you got the idea to come in here and rob these good people.”

“Suppose I got tired of not having my piece of the pie, oldfather.”

“Insufficient. Try again. Go back further.”

The young man smiled, his eyes becoming lascivious and hungry, like a wolf’s. He took a step forward and pointed the pistol directly between the Master’s eyes and Dorja let out a tiny squeak, barely audible, because for a moment she thought she was about to have to watch her Master die. She wanted to do something, but her frame was small and slight, she was not yet the warrior she would come to be, had not yet found the temerity to overcome her fears and fight. All that she was—the warrior that would stand against the Nightmare Sisters and liberate their prisoners, the defender of the Temple of the Despondent Lady, the woman whose glaive would become legendary in the Outer Worlds—that was all in her future, and she could not even fathom that woman yet.

So, she stared in abject horror as the young man, full of fire and hatred, grinned and said, “I told you…don’t talk down to me, oldfather.”

“Ah, so, there it is,” said the Master, his tone even, his face calm.

“There what is?”

“The First Lie. Spoken so easily and yet it was locked inside your throat all these years. Someone spoke down to you, made you feel irrelevant. But who was it, I wonder? I can’t see their face. I can see their effect on you but not their visage. Help me to see them, Daniel.”

The young man blinked. “H-How…?”

“Now, tell me, why must it be this way? Why earn money like this, and not any other?”

“Because no one else will take me. There are no other jobs…there’s nothing for people like me, grayhair! And the Doom comes—”

“Insufficient.”

The young man snarled at him. “Don’t lecture me like I’m some—”

“Do not blame the Doom for your inhumanity to Man. When you say there are no jobs, what do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean? No one’s hiring anyone like me—”

“Like what? What are you?”

“I’m a gods-be-damned skag and you know it!”

“Why? Why are you a skag, Daniel?”

“How do you know my—?”

“Why are you a skag?”

The young man stepped forward and pressed the barrel of his pistol to the Master’s forehead and Dorja yelped. She stood up, glaive in hand and trembling, hoping the Master snatched the pistol from the man’s hand, as she had seen him do in countless classes where he taught disarm techniques. But Master Jerrod only stood there, staring at the young man, supremely unafraid. From where she stood, Dorja could see only half her Master’s face, and she saw a look of infinite pity written in his eyes and brow.

“You trying to sway me, grayhair?” the young man whispered, his wolfish grin returning. “Think you can get inside my head?”

“Answer the question,” the Master said. “Why are you a skag?”

“I’m a skag because everyone says so. Isn’t that how it works?”

“There’s one of them.”

“One of what?”

“One of the lies. Now we’re getting somewhere. Someone told you you were a skag and a nobody and you believed them. Go back further. Who were the people that put you in a place where you would believe you could be a skag? Who made you feel so bad about yourself that being called a skag made sense to you?”

“How did you know my name was Daniel?”

“Answer my question first, then I’ll answer yours.”

“You been talking to Herrando, or Maela? Eh? One of them tell you about me?”

“There’s two more, I’m guessing. Who are Herrando and Maela? What lies did they tell you?”

The young man tilted his head to one side quizzically, licked his lips, eyes uncertain. He glanced over the Master’s shoulder and looked right at Dorja, as if seeing her for the first time. Then he looked back at the Master, and this time when he smiled, it was cautious, like he felt like he was a sap-eel farmer who might have just walked into their den by accident, and understood what the deal was. He looked around the diner, took in the patrons, looked at the old man behind the counter, still readying the money. He was reevaluating everything.

“It goes back further than Herrando and Maela, doesn’t it?” the Master said in a low voice. “Much further. Herrando and Maela, whoever they are, they are skags too, aren’t they? At least, that’s what they define themselves as. Losers. Like you. You all get together and commiserate over how unfair the universe has been to you. You confirm each other’s unfair treatment. And it is a salve, isn’t it? It feels good to have others around who have as much hate in their heart as you do.”

The young man just stared. “How did you know my name?” There was something in his voice. A tremor. Dorja noticed it. Recognized it as the first crack in the young man’s confidence.

“The three of you are friends, but they’re not really friends of yours, Daniel. It’s all a lie. You’ve all been lied to, and now you confirm the lie.” He shook his head. “But you are right about one thing. It’s not all your fault. I estimate life has been very unkind to you, and at such regular intervals that it must seem like a pattern. And that’s what all sentient beings are, really, pattern-seekers. But sometimes we become so obsessed with finding the pattern that we perpetuate it. Understand?”

The young man—Daniel—shook his head. “You don’t know me. You’re just guessing. Or it’s some kind of trick. You don’t me, you just guessed my—”

“Why are you a skag?”

“Because I am!”

“Insufficient!” the Master shouted, and Daniel jolted like he’d been slapped.

Dorja stood there, transfixed, unaware of whether she was about to engage in her first bout of combat or simply watch her Master die. She felt small, insignificant, completely out of her depth. Her mother had died and left her alone and for a time she had despised the Master and Nidanya and the monks and all their incessant singing and teach, but now…now she saw it all crashing down, and felt small as a mouse.

“Now, tell me,” the Master went on, more calmly. “Why are you a skag?”

“Because that’s how he left me!” Daniel shouted, his voice cracking.

“Who, Daniel? Who left you?”

Lip quivering in rage, gun shaking, Daniel’s eyes bore into the Master’s. “Egan.”

“Who is Egan?”

“My brother.”

“He left you?”

“Y-Yes.”

“How?”

“He…he…

“Say it, Daniel.”

“He just gave up on me, man. He left me…when we came to this place. He knew…he knew I wasn’t going to change. I tried. I tried to get off the trezh, but he…he didn’t give me enough time. I backslid. I told him I’d get off of it and I backslid. Then he…he said I had one more shot. Just one more chance. And I was good. For a while. I was real good…” His jaw clenched. A tear fell partway down his cheek. The diner was tomb-quiet. “We were doing good together. I had a job with me, making pipes for these guys out in Hemlée. Then…then I backslid again and stole his tools and sold them to get more trezh.”

“And he never forgave you?”

Daniel shook his head.

“And there was an argument, wasn’t there? A fight between the two of you. Words were said. Harsh words. Things that can never be unsaid.”

Daniel nodded.

“Before that, Daniel, long before that, someone must have told the First Lie.”

“First…?”

“The lie that made trezh the only suitable escape, the only drug of choice. Why did you turn to trezh, Daniel?”

Daniel shook his head in an uncomprehending way. “I…I-I don’t know—”

“Insufficient. You know who. Tell me.”

“I can’t.”

“Tell me!”

“I can’t!”

“Insufficient!”

“Listen here, you old grayhair! You don’t boss me around like I’m your dog! I’ve had enough of that—”

“There it is, we are so close, Daniel—”

“Shut up!”

“Who was it that bossed you around? Who treated you like a dog?”

“Everyone! Everyone treated me like I was lower than scum! Not one person defended me! My mother just watched and did nothing!”

“Did nothing against who, Daniel?”

“How did you know my name?!”

“Your father? It was your father, wasn’t it, Daniel? He did something. He hurt you and your mother only watched and let it happen. And when you didn’t fight back—”

“SHUT! UP!”

“—when you didn’t fight back, he mocked you, or stood over you, perhaps laughing. Was he laughing, Daniel? He was, wasn’t he? Or else smiling. He was always humored by your pain and your mother didn’t protect you, did she? She protected him. And your brother…how does he fit into all this? He…he must have done something too, yes? He…” The Master’s eyes became unfocused, questing, ranging as they had done over the five-day journey in the desert, when Dorja had watched him search for any predators, any threats. Then, he made a clicking sound. Master Jerrod always did that when some new insight had finally struck him. “Your brother took the same abuse you did, only when you were born, you became the new punching bag. Your brother was only too grateful not to be the focus of your father’s ire, and kept quiet. He allowed you to be the new target. The whole house shared this open secret. Your mother was also just glad it wasn’t her. That’s true, isn’t it, Daniel? They were all terrified of him, and glad that you were his only focus. I’m right, aren’t I?”

More tears fell from Daniel’s shocked face. He stared, gobsmacked, pistol still pointed at the Master. “How did you know my name?” he said, barely above a whisper.

Dorja’s heart was pounding. She wondered if this was the right time to strike.

“There is the First Lie, Daniel,” the Master said. “An unspoken lie, but a lie nonetheless. That you were useless, only viable as a punching bag, a means to deflect your father’s rage onto someone else. When you got older, you never talked about it with your brother. It also went unspoken. You tried to at least look up to him, please him. He didn’t suffer from drug abuse like you did, did he? Perhaps he had some trauma, but you took it longer than he did. He didn’t understand and you wished that he would. And now you blame yourself for ruining things between you and your brother. You blame yourself for everything.”

Daniel lowered the gun and stood there, red-faced, tears streaming now in an endless flood. The Master stepped forward and Dorja thought surely he was going to strike now, unsheathe his blade and smack the gun from the young man’s hand, perhaps even cut the hand off. Or perhaps the Master would launch himself at the young man and perform a disarm before throwing him to the ground.

The Master did none of those things. Instead, he stepped forward and embraced the boy, who wept openly and screamed into the Master’s chest.

The Master patted the young man’s head, and said, “You are no one’s punching bag, Daniel. And you do not need a gun to tell it to the world. Understand?”

“I…I don’t know…I…”

“Insufficient. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Then, in a stressed whisper, “Yes.”

“Very good.” The Master cast a glance in Dorja’s direction, and nodded for her to stand down. She did so gratefully, her stomach sick with knots. “Now,” the Master said. “Show me to the person who put that gun in your hand.”

* * *

“Why didn’t you just take the gun from him?” Dorja asked. “Or cut off his hand? Dorja knows you can do this.”

The Master turned the dial on the base of the firemaker, and the canister sent up a spark that instantly turned into a tall, warm flame. The warmth was good. Dorja was learning that the desert could be shockingly cold at night, almost as cold as the long nights back home, when she would huddle under blankets with her mother. “You would’ve liked that?” he asked, turning his back to her and tossing his blankets on the ground, arranging his bed for the night.

“It would have been safer.”

“Safer for whom?”

Dorja opened her mouth to speak, and stopped. It occurred to her that this was such a foolish question she didn’t even know how to respond for a few seconds. Finally, she said, “Safer for you, of course, Master.”

“Should I have killed him?”

“Of course not.”

“Why not?”

Dorja was shocked. Did he really need her to say it? “Dorja holds the candle. The candle will be snuffed if she takes a life, or allows someone else to kill when she could have stopped them.”

“So, the only reason to spare him is because of your personal code?”

Dorja had no answer to this.

“You believe killing is wrong, and I respect that. Your mother felt the same way.”

“How do you know? You barely knew her?”

“I knew her enough. A woman like that, one only needs to meet her once or twice to have the cut of her jib.”

“The cut of her…?”

“It’s a saying,” Master Jerrod said, kneeling and folding his blankets. “Back to the point. Your mother bade me watch over you, and guide you, but only if I gave my word that I would never attempt to bend you away from her Oath of the Candle. She was very clear what this Oath entails, and that one should never take a life. I respect her thoughts on the subject, but I have my own.”

“What are your own?”

“I feel that there is a point where killing might be unavoidable. But before any blood is spilled, all other options must be exhausted.” He laid down, turned his back to her, and glanced at her over his shoulder. “There was a path to finding his First Lie. I saw it in his eyes.”

“How?”

“The same way I knew his name.”

“How?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

Dorja shook her head.

The Master never answered her.

image [https://i.imgur.com/f6fHUfp.jpeg]