Chapter 9: Something in Common

After starting her day feeling like a ravenous dog, then spending the rest of it awash in the odors and dinge of the fringe slave market, food was the last thing Gale wanted.

     Now soaking in a much desired and needed hot bath, the Dociles drew for her, the scents and tensions drifted off with the steam, but the images did not: the cuts and scars, flies, the blank or hostile eyes of the captured, the crimped, pained faces of mothers hugging daughters, husbands, and sons before being lifted away from each other, and overall the smell of blood and waste like an unholy aura of misery.

    Her last conversation with Karis came back to her:

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    “You don’t look well, Gale.”

    “I’m not, Mistress, if I may say so.” It was somewhere between a question and declaration, and she hated how tiny her voice sounded.

     
    “You may. But now that you have, I’ll share this: what you feel now, I felt too, if not worse. I cried on my way back from the market. They beat me for it every time, until I stopped. 

   “I had to learn to quell my emotions and concerns, lock up my anger and disgust, especially where the little children were concerned. It was a painful lesson, quickly learned.

 “You’d best learn it too. If they see any weakness, the merchants will scheme to cheat you, and the nobles to usurp you. 

 “If the slaves see it, they’ll kill you.”

  Gale wanted to tell her she learned the wrong lesson. The right one was that you don’t enslave people, but having nowhere to go, she merely nodded. 

  “May I ask a question?” 

 “Yes.”

 “You said they beat you for it, yet you bear no scars. I still have mine after all these years. How is it you have none?”

 “They were healed, but not by those who study medicine.”

 Gale knew of such things. In her homeland they called them the Hill Women. They were forced to live in the mountains for their own safety, for they were as feared and hated as they were needed. 

   “I didn’t know you had such women here. Would you let them heal mine?”

   “If you’d like. We can go in another day or two after we sell the stock at the palace.”

   “Yes, I’d like that.”

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   Gale bristled at the thought of being part of it, despite the personal bond with Karis. 

   Never give in to the illusion that you are more than a slave; slavery may change its style and form, but never its nature.

   Gale supposed that in her own way Karis was bound to the nobles, with the added threat of always looking over her shoulders. It became clear to her court and nobility that she was grooming Gale to replace her.

   The problem for Gale was that Karis was just feared and respected, not liked, though she was properly given deference at all the feasts. 

   She told Gale they could keep an eye on her that way, to see if she was getting sick or weakening. At every feast, she risked being poisoned or assassinated.

   Surviving the first attempts, she did her best to quell any thoughts of a second attempt.

   Nobles died slowly and publicly, and she let the assassins’ corpses rot in the streets.

   At the moment, as the ponies swayed beneath them, it was the heat of the sun on her skin and the highgrass flies that plagued her.

Chapter 10: Growing Strong

   From the time Amadi told him to guard his tongue, Zephyr was put through the most difficult work he’d ever done, finding it way harder than even what he had to do on the family farm.

    In the following seasons, as he learned the names of the tools he used to polish and sharpen, and how to start fires with coal and wood, and work the bellows, and take over the finishing details of whitesmithing, and travel the land to deliver finished work, he began to fill out his clothes.

    Though he’d never be massive or bulky, there was no longer any doubt from anyone he was strong, and the bullies that called him scarecrow no longer did. They merely kept their silence when he passed, and didn’t look at him, which suited him fine.

   Cowards after all, then. 

    Amadi also found him to be a quick study, and never had to instruct him more than twice. At times, he did correct and tweak things to help Zephyr’s technique, or shape things more to his own liking, but Zephyr didn’t mind.

    He liked Amadi as a mentor: the man was patient with him and explained the reasons for everything he told Zephyr to do. He was patient even when things that weren’t supposed to burn caught fire as a result of Zephyr’s clumsiness or underestimating a task.

    It didn’t happen often, so Amadi merely yelled and explained that if he burned them out of house and livelihood, he’d make Zephyr take care of him when he couldn’t work the forge anymore. 

    Zephyr laughed. 

    Amadi didn’t. 

    Zephyr stopped.

    From that day on every time he thought of supporting his master he grew even more meticulous and attentive, coming up to the standards of Amadi himself.

    To Amadi’s great amusement he saw an increase in the number of young women who were suddenly in need of such things as charms and necklaces. It was work Amadi took in to keep his hidden coffers filled.

    He teased Zephyr without mercy on those days, but the boy took it in stride, replying Amadi would soon find himself in an old widow’s web.

    Zephyr’s seeming shyness emboldened some of the more adventurous girls, but Amadi knew he was simply perfected the act to use in the next round of training, where he’d likely need the skill to gain access to places a bolder personality would not. 

    Seeing that he could control himself around women, Amadi viewed it as a good sign for success; that meant he’d be ready sooner  rather than later.

    And Amadi was going to hate to see him go.

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    It was snowing the day Zephyr had finished packing, Amadi had gifted him with a leather tool bag he designed himself.

    Outside, a girl slightly taller than Zephyr waited for him, her braided red hair speckled with flakes, her black leather clothes stark against the gray and white of the day.

    “Thank you for everything, Master Amadi.” 

    “It’s just ‘Amadi’ now, Zephyr. You passed your apprenticeship long ago.”

    “True, but I’m still not yet a Master.”

    “In time, my son. May the myriad gods of this land go with you. I cannot remember them all.”

    “Nor I.”

    They embraced a moment, then parted.

     Zephyr turned to the girl. “Ready.”

     She nodded, and they trudged off.

     “My name is Riselle.” she offered, but he didn’t respond.

     After a few steps, Zephyr heard the latch shut on the forge door as Amadi went back to his own life. His heart broke, but not in the way it had when his parents were killed. It was his own lock, he supposed, on closing the door for himself.

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    “He was like a father to you?” 

    “Yes.”

    “But you are an orphan, yes?”

    “Yes. I didn’t say he was my father. Clearly you can see—”

    Riselle stopped walking and faced him. 

    “Then let me ask you this, scarecrow. Are you ready to make more orphans? Can you? Will you? Tell me now if you think you can’t. The forge master taught you how to bend and temper steel to your purpose, that it might serve you and those who pay you.

     “But in this new place, we become the steel that bends to the will and purpose of those who pay us. If you can’t resolve to become that, right now, tell me.”

     His parents…they killed them in front of him, knowing…even as he pleaded. 

     “Yet you did nothing. Would you like something else to fight for, to avenge them, now that your hate is kindled?” 

     As then, so now.    

    “Yes, Riselle. I will give myself to the will and purpose of those who pay me.”