Chapter 18

The Glint Of The Blade

I’m not exactly paying attention to what is happening around me as I make my way back from the midday ‘break’. I am in fact remembering the previous night, it was Hall-Three’s bath night, and as usual, I got to go first. It only happens once every two months, but I adore bath nights. It may very well be what drove me to fight so hard to take over Hall-Three in the first place.

The heated water, the burning smell of the delousing potion in the water, the chance to get knots out of my fur without ripping chunks of it off myself. It is those memories I am focused on when I practically walk into Qesh. He doesn’t look impressed, and I curse myself internally. I absolutely have to stop letting my attention wander during these breaks. That's how I got snuck up on last time after all.

I don’t say anything and try to move past him. But the old guard blocks my way, his head shaking.

“Hold on North you aren’t doing afternoon drills today.”

My now relatively clean fur stands on end at his words. I try to remind myself that I haven’t done anything wrong, I've been keeping myself out of trouble just like I was supposed to.

But what If they know about the morning sessions with Xael and Kalon every day?

Or worse what if they know about the small collection of coins, steadily growing inside my bed? At best they would take my money off of me. But what if they treat it like an escape attempt?! I still have nightmares about how I was punished for my last one. They rented me to House Tariff for three weeks. If I live another forty years I’ll never forget my time there, never forget that room under their manse. Even the memory of that place makes my heart race, and my hands clench.

I try to keep the panic out of my voice, but my reply comes too quickly, too high-pitched,

“Why?, Is it a job? I haven't done anything wrong"

I should definitely not have added that last part. Declaring I haven’t done anything wrong before any accusations have been leveled at me is asking for trouble.

The older man rolls his eyes.

“ We are assigning you your partner for the Storm Herald Invitational next month.”

I blink my surprise away as hope rises in me like the tide. They don’t know, they have no reason to care or a good way to find out.

“Oh. Uhh great, good.” I trail off.

“Honestly North,” he says with an exasperated sigh. “ You need to calm down a little, not every time I see you, am I out to get you.”

“Just most of the time” I reply with a half-hearted grin.

“ Yes, just most of the time now, get your cursed ass over to the manse.” I nod my acknowledgment and promptly turn around.

Of course, I’ve wondered who it will be, but every theory I've come up with is discarded as I approach the dark stone of BloodRock’s pretend fortress. I've been assigned partners plenty of times before for plenty of events and it's never like this.

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Every other time Muraab or whoever has just yelled it at us in the training yard since we will both be there anyway. If the other boy is in the Manse you don’t need Gori’s unparalleled genius to figure out who it will be. The sneaky little non-slave has been testing me with these morning sessions. My first instinct is to be annoyed. He is attaching himself to me for the tournament invite. I had to get attacked by a magic snake to get that invite. It's mine, I should get to pick who I work with.

Who would I pick though? Morean is the most obvious choice in terms of ability, but I could all too easily picture us killing each other. He wouldn’t want to listen to me, I wouldn’t want to listen to him. It would be a mess. It would be a bad idea not to choose someone from Hall-Three anyway. Insulting my own boys like that would be stupid.

Not that me making the choice was ever really an option. Atar or whoever would make some choice based on whatever it was they thought was important. Seeing some of the pairings they send into the pit I think the system may involve dice, or throwing knives at a board.

I haven’t tried to enter the manse since the morning of my fight at House Saffron. I head in the same way, through the delivery entrance. I’m not banned from the front gate or anything like that, this is the same way everyone who lives in the BloodRock compound enters the manse. Once you get through the larder and then the kitchens this path takes you right into the heart of the little fortress.

I nod at the guard on duty. I’m fairly sure his name is Toren, but he’s new and I'm not confident enough to risk using it. He lets me pass without a word.

As always the scent of spices all but makes my nose run, I know it's weird but I can’t help but enjoy the sensation.

Things get a little weird as I pass into the larder area. The series of small rooms with haphazardly filled shelves of spices, and foodstuffs covering every wall has domestics and the occasional serviles moving through it. The kitchen domestic slaves keep stopping what they are doing and staring at me. It happens no less than four times. By the third, I’m ready to grab one of them and start demanding answers. It is not a good idea to put your hands on the girls who work in the kitchens for a whole host of reasons, not least of which is that they have the final say in what I eat.

So I do my best to ignore the stares by not meeting the gazes of the slaves I pass. It works maybe a little too well, as when one of them tries to kill me I don’t notice until I'm practically being stabbed.

I’m no more than three steps into the kitchen proper when one of the domestics launches herself at me, kitchen knife in hand. All I see is a screeching mop of blonde hair and the glint of the blade. I react without thought, one arm coming up to block the blade, by meeting her forearm, the other lashing out to strike my assailant in the face. I admit it is a pretty hard punch, but it's made a lot worse by the addition of her own momentum. The blow takes her right off her feet, an audible crack sounds as I break something in her face. The knife never even reaches me, and I’m about to follow up with a series of kicks when I realize what I’m doing. Yes, she attacked me, but I was about to brutalize a domestic slave.

Taking a deep breath I try to calm myself.

“What on the seven worlds was that?! What's going on here?”

Beneath me, the woman is holding a hand to her face, but her fury is undiminished.

“I’ll kill you, you fucking animal!” She screams. That throws a torch back on the pyre of my temper. I do not like being called that word. I am a person. My parents were both human, I remember that much. My teeth go from clenched to bared. I don’t have any weapons, but I can easily rip her throat out, or I can take the knife off her and use that. Yeah, that's what I’ll do. BloodRock can find a new slave to cook his dinner. The thought makes me pause as I’m crouching over the woman. She’s blonde, middle-aged, and oddly thin for a kitchen slave. I blink as recognition hits me. It’s her cheekbones, just under those eyes so full of hate as she moves her hands away from her broken nose in a pitiful attempt to defend herself from me. They are the same as her son’s.

This is Kalon’s mother….no wonder she hates me. I let out a little snarl of frustration, smacking her hands aside and standing upright again.

“North! North! Wait, don't hurt her.”

With deliberate slowness, I glare across the kitchen. It's a low-ceilinged room with five different hearths. They are that metal stove kind that is sort of like a barrel with metal pipes leading out the top of them. These pipes go straight up into the ceiling where they curve out to carry the wood smoke of the stoves away from the manse and into the compound. As always the kitchen is hot, and is filled with the tempting scents of cooking…I sniff, today it's fish.

Standing at the entrance to the manse is that little domestic girl I keep seeing with Xael’s sister, Tullulah. Her eyes pleading, her expression grim.

“I’m going, I’m going” I reply, glaring at her. To my surprise the little domestic holds my gaze, at least until I stomp over to her, and she’s forced to step aside to let me pass.

For the first time in almost a year, I enter the home of the BloodRock family.