"Get up", said the man with the whip, and the boy didn't dare look up. He wanted to look at the man and let him know how much he hated him, but he knew no amount of stares would change things. They would only get him beaten, or worse. He stood up, trying to relax his back muscles. If the whip came down, it would be worse for him if he resisted it. He had seen men torn to shreds in minutes with those lead-tipped whips. Afterward, they would lie among the rocks, backs open like a goat's belly at the butcher's, and the carrion flocked to them. Too many times had he witnessed it to not know fear.
The boy had forgotten his name, if he had ever had one at all. He was no exception. All the children around him had been taken early on from their mother's arms. Some weren't taken at all but given up willingly. A mother's stomach didn't fill itself with love, and neither did their child's. Some women learned that lesson quickly, and they were healthier afterward. The ones who didn't ended up frail, sickly, or beaten. In the end, the child was taken anyway, so most women took the easier path. The boy didn't know how quickly or willingly his mother had given him up. He had stopped caring. He was alone.
He got up and rejoined the others. They were involved in a strange game that the Chainkeepers had come up with, but hadn't bothered to share the rules with them. It consisted of a series of obstacles. They had to run in a straight line, one after the other, and jump over crates and rocks in succession. If you were fast, jumped high, or dodged enough, at some point of the run someone —a Chainkeeper or one of their lackeys— would wave a key in front of you. They were Leash-keys, ones that could open any one of the kingsmetal collars around their necks. No one had seen anyone use one of those, but everyone knew about them, from fireside rumors to atavistic regressions that old women and wise men fell into, in which they foresaw or brought old memories back to life. They all knew what it was when they saw it, out of something that wasn't quite recognition but worked just as well. Each twilight, one of the fifty children would have the chance to grab it, but no one ever managed to do it. The key would melt into their hands, or remain just out of reach until the one holding it kicked the child away, or a brave child would manage to hold onto it for just a second before he was surrounded and taken away into darkness for days. Still, the children kept trying to reach it. No Chainkeeper had promised anything or said that if they caught it they would be given their freedom. No one had explained why they kept on torturing them so. But the game was played every day, like a wheel that spun them into ever finer threads, until at some point they would be worn so thin no one would be able to recognize them as human.
Even so, knowing all of that and having ran the circuit day after day, he had attempted to jump up from an outcropping to reach the key, hanging from the rock ceiling on a thread-like chain. He had fallen short and landed awkwardly, rolling as he had been taught by the endless repetitions to avoid a bone bruise. Still, he had bumped his shoulder and the skin was raw in patches. After getting up, he turned his head to survey the damage, but it looked worse than it hurt. And thea, beneath the scratches, was that thing.
The other children, the ones he huddled with at night, had taken to calling him Brand, on account of the strange sign burned into his shoulder, shaped like a bush. Rill, a girl half his size, said it had to be a gift from the Forever King, marking him for some great destiny. Brand couldn't understand how such a small child could have such strange thoughts in her head. Most of the others thought it was a birthmark and didn't give it much thought, but Brand didn't know the origin of it. One of his earliest memories was the stinging of the skin as it scabbed over, so he knew he hadn't been born with it. He just wished he hadn't gotten it, for anything that made you distinctive among the crowds in the Forever King's Castle was bad. In there, tall men hunched, and short men hunched even further, hoping to avoid the steely stare of the Chainkeepers. The whipmen were blunt and stupid, but they could be swayed out of beating you to death by boredom or fatigue. The Chainkeepers knew neither, as far as Brand knew. They weren't as brutal as the whipmen, but they were far more effective. Brand had seen a loudmouth child hang by his ankle for two straight days from a chain in the ceiling. He only avoided death by blood drain by swinging and hanging on with his hands for hours on end, until fatigue sent him head-down again. After that ordeal, he was the most invisible boy in the castle, keeping his gaze down constantly and never uttering more than coarse whispers.
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No one else saw the key that day, or at least no one broke out from the line to attempt to catch it. He knew some of the other children wouldn't even try anymore. After a while, you stopped trying. It took some a dozen tries, for others, it was closer to thirty, Brand guessed. No one would speak of it. They would nurse their wounds or pride in silence, never speaking of the just-out-of-reach key. Brand didn't know either if the Chainkeepers looked closely at them and counted who was still trying. He hoped they wouldn't. He had tried to get it nearly seventy times, but he had never gotten to hold onto it. He thought that if they would just let him hold it for a moment, even if they chained him for days afterward with no water or company, he would grow out of it, and he would stop trying. But he could never seem to get it, so he couldn't stop himself from trying.
In the last lap, everyone was panting, and Brand himself was at the back of the line, having fallen behind little by little. He reached the exit gate of the round room just as the last Chainkeeper turned toward him to spur him on. He slouched and tried his best to avoid looking weak. Chainkeepers were angered by such displays, more so by the children they were overseeing. He walked into the pitch-black corridor and the Chainkeeper shut the gate down after him. It was a long tunnel that led to the cave in which they lived, barely more than a pit on the side of the Castle. A Chainkeeper waited ahead to count the children. In that darkness, he was alone for the first time in a long while. He cherished the silence and the darkness. His barely-shod feet ached, and he walked slowly. He would probably be beaten a bit, but it would be worth it for that short respite.
Just then, he heard a voice right next to him and his heart sank. He couldn't even shriek.
"Who's there?" he managed to say as he stumbled ahead, looking back into the darkness to the place he had been walking past a moment before.
"The key," said the voice in a calm tone. It wasn't a children's voice. It was an adult's, but not like any adult Brand had ever heard. It seemed... free of worry or haste. He forced his feet to stop.
"What about the key?" he asked.
"You won't ever get it."
Brand paused and counted his heartbeats before replying.
"I was getting that idea myself."
"It doesn't matter. Those fools don't know what they're doing. They think they're driving it out of you, but it's not like that for all of you. For some, it can have the opposite effect."
"I don't understand what you're saying... mister."
"Don't worry about not getting it. That key is just an idea, it's not an actual key... it won't get you out of your Leash. But the fools have already given it to you."
"Given me what, exactly?"
"The idea of it. They should never have encouraged it."
"Why?"
"Because, in your chest, you already feel that key beating there, don't you?"
Brand concentrated on his heart. He could feel nothing different.
"I don't know what you mean. I'll just go ahead. I can't very well explain to the 'keeper how a voice in the darkness was selling me something."
The voice didn't reply. Brand felt a slight chill as if someone had passed right next to him, but in the narrow corridor he would have bumped into them. There was no other way out of it, and by the time he reached the outer gate and felt the whip for the first time that day, he realized he had to have been talking to a ghost.