CHAPTER 74

Her temper, never the best at times, exploded out from her in fury. She lunged forward, right fist flickering out like a snake’s tongue. Once, twice, lightning fast jabs to the boy’s nose that erupted stars in his vision. He stumbled back, hands rising to clutch his spurting nose and she pressed forward, left hand exploding out in a brutal cross that slammed into his jaw and sent him spinning to the ground.

A sudden hush hit the jeering circle when Gordon didn’t immediately get up. No one expected the gangly, scrawny girl to hit with so much force. One of Gordon’s buddies, Irving, rushed to his side and carefully prodded his friends’ face.

"You broke his jaw, you bitch!" He screamed, whirling to face her. She sneered at him in response, causing him to surge to his feet, hands knotting into fists. The circle of young trainees erupted into furious calls and jeers again.

Her sneer turned into a smirk. "I can break two jaws." She replied arrogantly. Suddenly Irving gestured expansively at the circle. "Can you take all of us on?" He yelled, turning slightly to the left and right, basking in the approbation.

"I can take on as many of you as want to come." She yelled back hotly. "A gouged eye, a broken nose, a broken jaw, how many of you want to put your precious balls on the line to hit a little girl?" She turned her head in a quick circle. "I know who each of you are. I know where you sleep, just the same as everyone else!" She warned. "You can come at me, but you’d best be prepared to kill me, because if you don’t you’ll wish I had!"

There was a momentary pause, and then the ring collapsed as everyone rushed in.

"Hie now!" He yelled hotly. "What’s all this, then?" He shouted, and immediately realizing that wouldn’t do any good, he waded into the fray, slinging eleven and twelve year old boys left and right. He grabbed a boy that let out a bone-chilling shriek of agony. He pulled the boy out of the tangle; blood was spurting hotly across the priests’ arm from some wound on the boy’s head. He kept screaming, blood splattering freely.

A second instructor, a former warpriest came into the room and immediately waded into the tangle of bodies and pulled out the towheaded girl.

Most of the boys that could, fled the room. As the room emptied, There were a few that couldn’t, one of which was screaming breathlessly in the first instructor’s arms.

"Come on now, it can’t be that bad." the man soothed, and turned the boy over in his arms. Blood pumped from a gaping eye socket, and the instructor recoiled in horror, dropping the kid. "By the Healer!" He exclaimed in shock.

"Cyrillus!" He shouted as he staggered back.

Cyrillus eyed the spindly girl that panted heavily in his arms, her eyes burning with grim resolution and fists tightly knotted with hate and sat her down bodily in one of the chairs. "You don’t move." He admonished, and moved to the boy’s side.

"Shit. This can’t end well for him." He murmured as he probed the shredded eye socket with a thumb. He took a breath and whispered a quick prayer to the Golden Lady. The boy convulsed and went limp in the warpriests’ arms, but the blood ceased flowing.

He glanced around at the boys that remained. One boy was flat on his back, face and neck purpled, face bloody. Cyrillus checked over the boy. A broken jaw, a bloody nose. How could that have happened? He glanced at the girl. Surely an eleven-year-old girl couldn’t have broken the boy’s jaw.

He moved to the next one, who was huddled on the ground, clutching the spot vulnerable to every boy. Blood seeped between the child’s fingers.

"By the blighted Void, what happened here?" He swore softly. He would have to call for magical healing. Clerical healing would close a wound or heal a break or cure a disease, but magical healing would restore what was lost. The boy behind him would regain his eye. Whatever trauma the boy clutching his privates had undergone, he’d regain them. In the meantime he’d fix the broken bones as best he could.

-I can’t believe she’s resisting at this level. That’s usually not possible.

-Idiot, she tested charcoal on the Lucianus Scale. This level is totally expected.

-Katarina, Listen to me. Listen to me, and obey. Tell me about Devon.

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The discussion could be heard from outside Devon’s office, in the hall where Katarina sat on a low bench, kicking her feet idly.

"It’s pretty obvious you’re not capable of responding to Katarina appropriately." Devon argued. "She needs appropriate supervision and guidance."

Cyrillus chuckled. "She can get both from me, same as anyone else. What she can’t get from you, however, is a sense of safety." He argued.

"Katarina has reached a breaking point and you were powerless to nip this behavior in the bud. Gordon, Irving, and the others should have been held accountable for their behavior and corrected per the law. Per. the. Law." he fumed. "This bullshit "oh no, don’t touch the girls, blah blah blah shit didn’t get you fuck-all except a bully with a broken jaw, another with a missing eye, and a potential rapist that was stabbed in the dick!" Cyrillus shouted. "If you’d punished them properly, this sort of behavior would have been beaten out of them long before they came to me. Now I have to clean up your mess!"

"I hardly think that’s the case. I reported what I knew at the time." Devon replied blandly.

"Oh yes, I saw that farce of a report. ‘Boys will be boys’." he sneered. "All you’ve done is instill them with a lack of discipline, responsibility, and accountability." He kicked at Devon’s desk angrily, causing it to jump.

"You need to fix this shit and quick. That girl from Nauders will be here within days. Days." He emphasized. "Gordon and Irving and that other boy, what was his name? Dannil?" He inquired abruptly, and waved his hand quickly, dismissing the reply as rhetorical. "Will be moved to the larger boy’s classes. If they’re feeling the call of their loins, then they’ll need to be in the older kids’ group." He smirked. "I’ll tell everyone in that group what they’ve done. That, and regular Mortification of the Flesh, and maybe, just maybe we’ll be able to put things to rights as far as they’re concerned." He sighed. "Katarina’s got less than a year before she’s moved to the Witch Hunter class. I want the Nauders girl roomed with her when she arrives. If you can’t protect one girl," He sneered, "Maybe it’s best we leave it to Katarina."

-Good, good. More, Katarina. Tell me more.

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Sunlight streamed through the window, creating golden shafts of light that seemed to transfix the dust motes in the air. Rows of shelves crammed with books lined the entirety of the interior of the office. On one side of a massive desk sat an effeminate man with gray eyes and brown hair, dressed in the robes of his order. He eyed the occupant of the seat on the other side of the desk with a mixture of consternation and amusement.

The desk itself was mounded with all sorts of bric-a-brac. There was an ostentatious silver and glass oil lamp, a long knife, several stacks of papers, a small sack that bulged with rounded shapes inside, and a large plate of sandwiches, uneaten.

Sulking in the other seat was a white-haired girl of ten with green eyes that glowered and frowned, thin arms folded across her chest. She wore a simple cotton dress and woven sandals, the same as all the students at the school.

"Katarina..." the man began softly, and stopped with a sigh. He gestured aimlessly. "You were told before- no fighting."

She sneered at him. "Then tell Irving to stop trying to put his thing in me." She demanded. "Bastard tries it again and I’mma tear it off."

The man sucked in a breath and sat back. Boys and girls were raised and allowed to bathe together until roughly the age of puberty, and were usually separated afterword. Irving obviously had no right to do such a thing, but because of his youth he hadn’t been taught about such things, aside from what he may have observed from his parents before boarding here. To compound things, Katarina was the only girl in her peer group. The Church of the Golden Lady recruited from the nobility, taking second and third sons and daughters, training them to be priests, paladins, and clerics. Katarina herself had been called by the Church to be a Witch Hunter, and she had been called at the unheard-of age of six.

Because of her young age, she’d been enrolled in the general classes, which were populated by orphans, runaways, and homeless children. In less than a year she would be transferred to the Witch Hunter division.

"First, Katarina, you must remember to use proper language." He admonished gently. "You’re from a proper House and you should show proper language." He paused. "And you’re absolutely right, Irving should not be doing such things. I’ll handle that." He added. "The Edicts of Love from the Lily of the Dawn expressly forbid such things and he shall be punished."

She blew out a breath of air at that, causing a lock of hair to flutter. "Fine good that’ll do. He’ll get a talking-to and he’ll do it again. And he’ll get his friends in on it too, like that sonnabastard Gordon." She complained. "I’mma knock’em both out."

He compressed his lips together. "They really do this?" he asked curiously, and she glared at him again.

"Of course they do! I told you so, didn’t I?" She argued hotly. "I shouldn’t have to fight to take a bath without them ganging up on me!"

He folded his hands. "We can’t give you your own separate bath." He replied. "Would you feel better if there were someone there to supervise?" He asked. She frowned in thought at that, but shook her head. "If they don’t try in the bath, they’ll try after Lights Out." She argued.

"The dorm is supervised. They couldn’t-" He began, but she rolled her eyes so ostentatiously he recoiled.

"Yes they can. It’s easy. There’s one person, and they just peek on the sleeping area whenever they feel like it. You can see them come up to the door with time to spare."

He took a long, slow breath. "Katarina, I’d like you to tell me in detail what’s going on. If there’s something we can do, I think we’d better do it." He said after a while.

"It’s not like you care." She replied sullenly.

"Actually, I care a lot." He replied warmly. "You see, you’re going to have a new friend soon. Her name is Frederika and she’ll be arriving here shortly." he replied. "We have to provide a safe environment for you."

She rolled her eyes at that. "Give me that knife, I’ll make it safe." She replied. He laughed at that, but stopped when she glared at him. She was serious.

"Katarina, do you know what the responsibility of the Witch Hunter is?" He asked curiously.

"Of course I know. It’s to hunt the witch." She rolled her eyes. "I thought you were the teacher, Devon."

His mouth twisted. "That’s Sir Devon." he corrected. "And that’s the job, yes, but not the responsibility, Katarina."

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She sat forward in her chair.

"The responsibility is to protect everyone. Man and woman, boy and girl. Cook, blacksmith, cleric, and cardinal, from the terror of the unsanctioned." He spread his hands expansively. "You’re going to have a huge job protecting everyone."

He made a gesture at the stack of papers. "I’ll take care of everything. I’ll see what we can do for getting you separate rooms and a supervised bath. It’s going to take some time though, so I’m going to need you to protect Frederika."

-Good, that’s it. Tell me more. Tell me everything.

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The two girls sized each other up carefully without saying a word.

Their extreme similarity only heightened their differences. Frederika was pale and slender, willowy with strikingly violet eyes and waist-length silvery-white hair the color of cornsilk that reflected her albino heritage. She wore brilliant white silk that only furthered the sense of colorlessness. Standing at an equal height to her was the green-eyed Katarina, who was just as slim, though she was toned with muscle from constant exercise. Her own hair was solid white, the white of bone, of alabaster. Katarina’s skin was ruddy from the sun and nicked and scraped and scratched.

Devon watched the two of them curiously as they carefully scrutinized each other. They sized each other up quietly for some time, neither saying a word to the other, not breaking eye contact.

"You two could be sisters, you’re so alike." Devon marveled, breaking the silence. As if on cue, the two immediately turned to him and disagreed.

"She’s not my sister." they replied in unison and both looked at each other with surprise.

"Frederika." The albino girl greeted by way of introduction.

"Katarina." the other girl replied.

-Keep going. You’re doing fine. Remember to breathe.

The familiar nightmare, a roiling black thundercloud that seethed with lightning, chasing her across an endless field of tall grass, groaning and rumbling with thunder

-No! No! Katarina, focus. You’re safe. No nightmares, here. Come on, you can do it. Tell me about Frederika. What happened next?

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After a long space of time where neither spoke, Devon broke the silence again. "Frederika, you’ll be staying with Katarina. She’ll help you get settled." He raised his eyebrows. "Katarina, take her back to the dorms. You’re granted a freeday so you can show her around." He requested.

The girls were silent as they walked down the hallway, each eyeing the other in intervals.

"Are you also from Nauders?" Frederika asked curiously. It was the first thing she said since their introduction.

Katarina shook her head. "I was born in Begeirde." She replied unselfconciously.

Frederika reached out and lightly touched katarina’s hair with a fingertip, and then smiled at her, almost shyly. "I should like to become friends with you, Katarina."

-Such a pretty girl. It’s no wonder you two became so close. Tell me more about her, Katarina.

-We need to know everything she knows about Devon. Another voice intruded warningly.

-This is my interrogation. I’m guiding her through it the best I can. Now shut up and bring the incense closer. No, there. Good. Yes. Breathe, Katarina.

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Katarina was jolted awake by a terrified shriek followed by bullish laughter.

"Hey, this isn’t Katarina at all!" A boy exclaimed.

"I don’t care! Let’s do it anyway!" Another brayed. Katarina rolled from her bed and dashed through the spacious dorm unheeding of any obstructions. The room was long and wide and filled with rows of bed in orderly intervals. There were desks with chairs at one side of the room; Katarina headed in that direction.

She tripped and tumbled over a chair, struggled to her feet as Frederika let out another hysterical shriek. Katarina thumbed blood from her lip and grabbed the upended chair by the rear leg. She planted her feet and heaved, tearing the leg off the chair with a crack. Improvised weapon ready, she hurtled through the room, arrowing in on Frederika’s frantic cries.

"‘Ere, get her shift off and let’s have a go!" a voice sniggered, eliciting another cry from Frederika.

"No! Leave me alone!" She cried out in heavily accented Anglish.

"Yeah, this girl and then Katarina." the familiar voice of Irving echoed in Katarina’s ears.

Katarina, locating her target by sound alone swung from the hips, a scream of her own escaping tightly clenched teeth.

The impact jarred Katarina’s arms up to the elbows and spun her around. She leapt up on Frederika’s bed and brought the chair leg down in an overhead blow that rocked another boy’s skull and pitched him forward, insensate.

"What? What?" Someone yelled. "Hey!" They cried.

Frederika was sobbing and crying constantly, Katarina’s eyes jerked in the near-blackness of the dorm, hunting her targets. Her heart pounded hard and hot and painful in her ears and it seemed like she couldn’t get enough air, no matter how hard she breathed. Her arms were weak and trembling, the muscles feeling like hot, loose rubber bands. There were at least three others, she guessed.

"Fuck! Let’s get out of here!" A boy cried, and Katarina leapt forward, this time thrusting forward with the chair leg with all her might.

Her weapon slammed into the boy with a wet crunch; he let loose a low, wheezing cry as he slumped down, dragging Katarina’s arms down and pulling the chair leg from her hands.

Katarina stumbled backwards, legs weak and wobbling. She forced air into her lungs and tried to yell, but could only let out a breathy, nearly inaudible scream. She hit a bed and fell over and collapsed face down on the floor.

Suddenly, she could hear the sound of footsteps slapping on the polished wooden floor over her thundering heartbeat. A hot shard of adrenaline slammed into her heart and she launched herself forward into a run. She slammed into someone, and instinctively grabbed the boy around the waist, pitching them both forward to slam onto the floor. She spidered over him, hands seeking and grabbing as she sought his head.

One of her fingers discovered his eyes, She lunged forward with a predatory scream and sank two of her fingers on each hand into his eyesockets, feeling the jellylike resistance of his eyes give way under her probing nails. He let out a shriek as she heaved backwards, pulling his head up and back and he shrieked again, hot blood spurting across her fingers. She pulled her fingers from his face and planted both of her hands on the back of his head and slammed it into the flooring. She couldn’t hear anything. She couldn’t see anything. Her awareness shrank to the feeling of the boy’s skull as she slammed it into the floor over and over again.

-Oh shit. Shit, no. Goddess watch over us all. Katarina-

The voice cut off. Wait, what was going on? It was like she was deep underwater, with no way out.

-Shitshitshit- Katarina, Katarina listen to me: You’re safe. You’re well-fed, you’re in a comfortable bed. There is nothing that can hurt you here. Feel your fingertips? Wiggle your toes.

-You’re going to bring her out?

A long pause.

-No. Wait, what’s this? Katarina, tell me about this.

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Cyrillus grumbled and bit off complaints as he struggled into his robes. He didn’t take well to being dragged out of bed. He’d been a soldier nearly twenty years before the Church had called him home, forcibly retiring him to the position of instructor. But soldier’s life or no, he still didn’t like getting dragged out of bed at unexpected and bleary hours. When you were summoned by Her Grace the Grand Cardinal, however, you went.

As he strode down the halls, he straightened his robes and ran his hand over his head, though he had no hair to speak of.

He entered the chambers of the High Court, and took a brief glance at the theocratic head of the Anglish Empire. He concealed a grimace while wiping his mouth with his hand; her hair had been perfectly coiled and coiffed.

"Approach, Master Cyrillus." the Grand Cardinal said without introduction. "Let’s dispense with this quickly."

He blinked in confusion as he approached the Petitioner’s Stand, a raised dais with the Lily of Spring in gold on its surface.

"I presume you’ve heard?" She asked, and he shrugged, confused.

"Forgiveness, Your Grace. I’m assailed by information from a number of sources every day." he replied quickly. "To what are you referring?" he asked, and the Grand Cardinal blew out an angry breath.

"So you haven’t." She replied cryptically. "That means this’ll take longer than it should." She grumbled.

Cyrillus opened his mouth, but the Grand Cardinal raised her hand peremptorily.

"Oh, shut up old man." She ordered gently. "Listen: Not more than an hour I was dragged from my sleep because I had been told of something rather extraordinary." She clamped her lips together so hard that her mouth was some white, twisted scar.

"One of the children that will be coming under your tutelage has committed murder this night."

Ice doused his heart. His mouth worked. Who? Why?

The grand Cardinal nodded at his reaction. "You didn’t know, then." She remarked and picked up a couple of papers. "Katarina Pavlenko." She stated, and set the papers down. "That remarkable girl killed four boys in the dorms. What do you think about that?" She asked curiously, and removed her glasses to wipe them.

"I’m... I’m shocked, Your Grace." he stammered. "The boys, who were they?" He asked, and the Grand Cardinal lifted an eyebrow.

"Gordon Blackwood, Irving Logan, Dannil-" she began, and he closed his eyes. "I know them, Your Grace." He interrupted, and let out a sigh and looked down at his feet.

"I thought you might. I have been reading your daily reports of the strifes between Katarina and the boys." She chuckled. "I am no historian, but I daresay Katarina is likely the first girl we have taken in so young. She interests me." She added musingly. "Will she stumble and fall? Will she rise to greatness? Both? Neither?" She shrugged. "This is considered Sealed between the two of us, Master Cyrillus:" She suddenly commanded, and he straightened.

"As you command, Your Grace." he responded immediately.

"Good. No need for idle gossip." she replied. "Katarina apparently broke the skulls of two boys and stabbed a third in the chest with a chair leg."

His mouth dropped open, but the Grand Cardinal continued. "According to the Dorm master on duty she was found pounding the head of the fourth boy into the floorboards. We used all the powers available to resuscitate them all, but they were quite dead, Master Cyrillus."

"What... What did Katarina say, Your Grace?" he asked.

"They’d come to rape her, apparently, and found Frederika’s bed instead. Katarina dispatched them all before they were able to accomplish their goal, thank the Goddess, but you now know how politically charged this is." She warned, glaring at him over her glasses. He nodded.

"One word from Frederika and we could lose all of Nauders. One word. I don’t think I need to explain to you the value of the Nauders Duchy, do I?" She asked, and he shook his head.

"Good." She replied self-satisfactorily.

"About Katarina, your Grace." he began, and She held up her hand.

"She’s sitting in a cell." She began and his face clouded over with tears. She was so promising. "But for protection only. At the end of this interview you’re going to escort her back to the dorms. She’s getting bathed and I suppose if she’s wounded those will be tended to as well." The Grand Cardinal announced. She let out a breath. "Four boys, much bigger than she, with naught but a chair leg." She wondered aloud. "Simply remarkable."

"Her punishment, your Grace?" He asked, and she frowned down at him. "What? Why? She did what she felt was right, and in this instance, we can find no fault with her. However, she will no longer patronize the dorms of the general classes." She announced.

"Your grace, I know that she is more than ready to move to the Witch hunter classes already. She is incredibly quick, both on and off her feet. She’s got the talent and aptitude. She’s strong. She’s ready, in more ways than one." He paused for a moment, struggling to find the right words. "I ... delayed her entrance into the Witch Hunter classes by a year, however, because of the Nauders girl." he smiled a little. "I thought she might like a friend." he finished softly. "A girl with which she might find common ground." He gestured with his hands meaninglessly. "Certainly, Frederika has come to us to become a Priestess, but surely three-quarters of a year for Frederika to become used to Anglish ways and three-quarters of a year for Katarina to flourish with a fellow girl is excusable."

The Grand Cardinal gave him a half smile. "Both of them will move to the Preux Dormitories." She replied simply. "If possible, as roommates. They will both be enrolled in the academia." She lifted the papers again. "Right now, Katarina has a problem with her temper, and it seems as though she’s got a problem with her language. She comes from landed nobility, Cyrillus, it’s wholly inappropriate for her to be behaving like an uncouth savage. She will attend the Witch Hunter classes properly, but also be enrolled in the Preux courses." She waved dismissively. "Preux shall be an appropriate political maneuver for us to repent to Nauders for Frederika’s assault. They won’t complain to us if she returns to Nauders not as a simple priestess, but as a Cardinal Priestess."

Cyrillus nodded, but inwardly he was tired of the political machinations already. The Preux curriculum was a high-track education system targeted to the children of the upper levels of society. It covered history and geography, the arts and languages, theologic and magic sciences, manners and poise, singing and dancing, as well as participating in various sporting and competitive events.

Had Katarina not been recruited to become a Witch Hunter, it was likely that Katarina would have been enrolled in such courses because of her station. As it stood, however, Katarina displayed all the manners and charm of a street child; confrontational, short-tempered, quick to switch to vulgarity and violent behavior. Spending four years in the general courses, the courses given to orphans and abandoned children had clearly regressed her. She would likely be learning from scratch.

-How could she know of this?

-Rumor? Gossip? Maybe she found the records herself? She does hold the rank of Inquisitor, you know. I trained her myself. All right, let’s continue.

-Katarina, you were telling me about Frederika...