CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

“If you have made it this far, you can make it one more day.”

~ The White Stag, Eighth Age

Hanso strode into the council chamber on the third floor of the Orai’s clock tower, scowling. The expression was a formality. He was more curious than angry—unlike Airo, who was on a warpath, furious about the foreigner. Hanso could only guess at her motives for approaching the school, though he didn’t think they were as dark and terrible as the other sullsai did.

He nodded to the High Xamarai seated at the short-legged arudai table and took his place on one of the two remaining cushions. The final cushion was large and ornate, reserved for the ansai. The cushion to its immediate right was no different from the other ten, but it was always reserved for Hanso. He was the ansai’s most trusted advisor.

As if thinking about him had summoned him, Ansai Viran stepped through the sliding silk-panel doors at the back of the room. The High Xamarai rose and saluted him: right fist over the heart, torso bowed at a forty-five-degree angle. The ansai returned the gesture, though he used his left hand to salute, and they all sat together.

“Some of you are displeased with my decision,” said the ansai, gazing around as if daring anyone to speak against him.

Airo rose to the bait. “Ansai, the girl must be punished. She’s committed a criminal act in trespassing—”

“She may not have known she was committing a crime,” said Hanso. “She’s foreign, unfamiliar with the severe punishments associated with trespassing on military property.”

“Severe, yet she’s still alive,” Ithrin said from the far end of the arudai. He was a graying, sour-faced man who was a stickler for rules.

Viran clasped his hands, lacing metal and flesh. “There is no honor in killing a civilian, and no sense in killing a foreigner who may have ties to countries we are friendly with—or worse, countries we are at odds with.”

“And what if she’s from Moorfain?” Ithrin shot back. “Her eyes are—”

“Purple eyes were once a marker of great power,” Viran interrupted in a dangerously quiet voice. Hanso shot him a swift, searching look.

“Ten ages ago,” Ithrin muttered moodily.

“In

legends

,” said Airo, determined to doom the girl. “This is the real world, where only Moorfainian sorcerers have eyes remotely like hers. If the color is a mark of power, it’s a mark of evil power.”

“Airo, be reasonable,” said Hanso. “Would the Moorfainians have sent a spy like her, someone so blatantly visible and out-of-place?”

“If so, their strategy seems to be working,” Airo snapped.

“I doubt she’s Moorfainian, but we can’t allow a foreigner, a female, no less, to work alongside the future protectors of Jidaeln,” said Ithrin.

“I set her a challenge, and she passed,” said the ansai. “She handled the blade in a familiar manner, if not a skilled one. She proved determined to finish the fight, despite sustaining injury. She even broke through my guard to land a blow of her own.”

“That sword of hers doesn’t look like it could cut through a pat of warm butter,” said Airo. “More likely she cheated.”

“How?” said Hanso. It was a simple question—he was genuinely curious as to Airo’s theory—but the other man refused to offer an answer.

“It was a fair fight,” said Viran, “and the girl has earned her place.”

“Her place to do what?” Airo demanded. “She can’t graduate to become a warrior of our nation. She can’t rise through the ranks to become a sullsai.”

“Her place to learn,” Viran replied, as if this addressed every one of his subordinates’ concerns.

“What if she discovers our secret while she’s here?” Airo pressed.

“She will be prohibited from attending or discussing our evening classes.”

“And if she were to somehow unearth the truth anyway?”

Viran shrugged. “Then the only recourse will be to execute her.”

Hanso nodded and stared around at his peers. “I can accept these terms. Kayah So’stah will stay.”

There was still some bickering to be done on Airo’s part, but in the end he submitted to the combined will of Viran and Hanso. Defeated, he and the other sullsai stood, bowed, and left the chamber.

When the men had gone, Viran let the tension melt out of his body. “They aren’t happy.”

“Of course not. This is the most controversial decision you’ve ever made.” Hanso fixed Viran with a shrewd look. “Why are you doing this, Ansai? What is this girl to you?”

“She’s nothing to me.”

If that were the truth, Hanso was a wyvern’s uncle. “Why do you defend her?”

“She has potential. If she wants to learn, let her. Is that not the point of a school?” Viran’s voice had the cutting edge of a blade, but Hanso wasn’t as easily intimidated as the other sullsai. He’d been Viran’s teacher before the boy had won leadership of the Xamarai at the tender age of seventeen, and he remembered the small, frightened child who’d come to the black gates so many years ago.

“She is wild, Viran.” He used the ansai’s name, an informality only he was afforded. “When I looked into her eyes, there was . . . something strange. Dangerous.”

“If that’s how you feel, why did you agree to let her stay?”

“I said dangerous, not malicious.” Hanso stared at the man before him, who’d grown from that frightened child into the most powerful military leader Jidaeln had seen in centuries. In Viran’s two years as ansai, he’d led three successful campaigns against the Moorfainians and had restructured the training of new troops—but for all that, he was young. “I’m interested to know what

you

saw when you looked in her eyes.”

The ansai arched a calculating brow. Hanso folded his arms, waiting.

“I saw a mystery waiting to be unraveled,” said Viran.

Viran had always been a scholar at heart. He studied mathematics, science, and linguistics, but his favorite subject was history. There were legends aplenty about purple-eyed beings, passed down and diluted over the ages.

“What do you think you can learn from her?” asked Hanso.

“I’m not sure; but it would be a shame not to seek answers when the opportunity has been so fortuitously presented.”

That was well and fine, but this was neither the time nor the place for such folly.

“I won’t tell you what to do, but I will advise caution,” said Hanso. “Don’t get invested. She has no viable future here. It wouldn’t be fair to get her hopes up, only to have to put her to indentured servitude in a month.”

“Why, Sullsai Hanso,” Viran said coolly, “it would almost seem as if you were the one defending her now.”

“As of this meeting, she’s officially my apprentice. I shall defend my students until such time as they can defend themselves.”

In truth, the young girl reminded Hanso of the young boy Viran had once been: lost, frightened, but filled with determination. She had impressed him, and that didn’t happen often. None of the sullsai had believed Viran would ever amount to much, but he’d grown into a legendary warrior. Hanso was interested to see what Keriya might amount to, if given the chance to prove her worth.

For a moment it looked as though Viran were about to smile. Then his mask settled back in place, shrouding him in coldness.

“Thank you for your counsel, Sullsai Hanso. You are dismissed.”

Hanso stood and offered the ansai a bow. Then he, too, turned and left the room.

Pain tore across Keriya’s ribs, rousing her from sleep.

“Where am I?” she mumbled, wincing as her injury prickled. It would soon be another scar to add to her collection. Her arms bore the evidence of abuse she’d suffered in her childhood home of Aeria, and during her travels in Allentria she’d accumulated a slew of new marks. The worst had come from a blade that hadn’t broken her skin: a dark, puckered crescent rested over her heart, the physical reminder of a battle Keriya had chosen to forget.

She sat up on a pallet, looking around the black marble room. As she did, she realized the only thing she was wearing besides her undergarments was a bandage of the red, spade-shaped leaves—

covai

, they were called—plastered on her wound. She pulled the linen covers around herself, causing pain to burn her left side.

“Gracious, you’re awake!”

Keriya started at the voice, not because it was unexpected, but because it was female. A woman in a shapeless white frock had entered the room. Though the customs and clothing of Jidaeln differed from those in Allentria, Keriya thought she was likely a healer.

“When the ansai brought you in I feared you were dead,” she said. “And he was saying you’re to train with the Xamarai? Well, I never heard of such a ridiculous, blasphemous thing—”

Keriya could only lend half an ear to the healer’s babbling. She’d passed her first test. As soon as she was better she would begin to learn the art of the sword.

“My sword,” she gasped. “Where’s my sword?”

“Lie down before you tear your stitches.”

“The weapon I brought in with me,” said Keriya, scanning the room. “It’s very old and very dirty, and it’s

very

important that I get it back.”

“The ansai has confiscated it. Apprentices are forbidden from having their own weapons.”

“You don’t understand, I need it to—”

The door burst open, interrupting Keriya. In strode Airo and Hanso, followed by the ansai himself. The healer bent in a curtsey, lowering her eyes. Keriya scrunched down under her covers.

“Thank you for your services,” the ansai said to the healer, gesturing for her to leave. It looked like she wanted to protest—Keriya wished she would, because she didn’t want to be left alone with the men—but the healer retreated into the adjacent room, an office lined with shelves of potted plants and potion bottles.

“It’s time for you to begin training,” the ansai said to Keriya.

“What?” Her brain stalled, unable to process the ludicrous command, and her cheeks grew hot. “I’m not dressed.”

“You’re to be fitted for apprentice robes,” he informed her calmly.

“But—”

“First lesson of training with the Xamarai,” Airo declared in a brash, obnoxious voice. “When the ansai commands, you obey!”

He moved forward, as if intending to drag her from the pallet. Keriya tensed in alarm, but the ansai stopped Airo’s approach with the merest twitch of his left hand. The older man subsided, scowling.

Shaking with nerves, Keriya wrapped the blanket around herself before rising awkwardly, favoring her injured side. Airo’s scowl deepened—Keriya hadn’t been aware that was possible—but the ansai inclined his head in the slightest of nods. She got the feeling that she’d passed another test.

“This way,” he said, sweeping from the room.

Keriya longed to ask about her sword, but she wasn’t prepared to have that argument while the militant Airo was present. With a resigned sigh, she followed the party into the corridor.

The black marble hallway was a cool, sparsely lit place. Its rounded ceiling was adorned with intricate carvings, and triple-bladed fans hung suspended from rods, spinning noiselessly and creating welcome gusts of air as she passed beneath them.

The dark walls opened and they crossed a gallery where shafts of sunlight streamed through black pillars. To the right, Keriya glimpsed a lush garden complete with a well and shrubbery. To the left were the barren training grounds, beaten flat by generations of apprentices.

“Keep up,” Airo snapped. “Didn’t they teach you how to walk in whatever heathen place you’re from?”

Keriya decided she hated him.

When they reached the end of the hall, the men stepped from the flagstone floor to the red earth. Keriya reluctantly followed. The sun struck her, heavy and blistering, and the ground scalded her bare soles. She clutched the sheet tightly as she danced from foot to foot. Snide laughter met her ears, and she glanced around to see a group of passing apprentices leering at her.

This had been a mistake. She’d flung herself willingly into a pit of vipers in the vain, foolish hope that she might become a warrior capable of defeating Necrovar.

“Uh . . . Ansai?” Keriya hurried to catch him. “Am I free to leave? If I wanted to, that is?”

Airo seized on her moment of weakness. “I told you she’d be useless. Already she’s whining like a spoiled child.”

Keriya’s mouth fell open and she shrank away from the ire in his voice.

“Why do you ask?” the ansai inquired.

Thinking fast, she said, “I—I want to know if I’m viewed by the other apprentices as a prisoner or a student.”

Airo rolled his eyes in exaggerated disbelief, but the barest hint of a smile touched the ansai’s lips.

“They will view you as a student,” he promised. Keriya nodded, though she noted that he’d avoided answering her first question.

Misdirection and omission

, she thought wryly.

A gulf of emptiness widened within her as memories, unbidden and unwanted, spilled from a sealed compartment in her brain. She saw a smiling bronze face, heard a voice speaking a melodious language, felt the smooth ridges of scales beneath her fingertips—

“This is the clothier, where you’ll be fitted for robes.” The ansai interrupted Keriya’s reverie. He veered left, toward one of the smaller buildings. She hunched her shoulders and trotted after him, fighting to shake the upset in her stomach and the swirl of visions in her head.

She was relieved to discover a woman tailored the garments for the Xamarai. The seamstress, Rana, had a kind, round face and wavy gray hair pulled back in a tight bun. She took Keriya’s measurements and gave her a set of apprentice robes and a pair of sturdy, lace-up sandals.

Keriya dressed in a back room and emerged in her new outfit. She liked the robes—their color was similar to that of her old dress, but the fabric was cooler, well-suited for the intense heat, and the design afforded her a better range of movement.

“I’m ready,” she declared.

“Apprentice,” said the ansai, “you’ll need to do something about your hair.”

Keriya froze in place. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Don’t question the ansai,” boomed Airo. “Your hair is an inappropriate length. It will hinder your training. You must cut it.”

She retreated half a step before she could master herself. All three men saw her recoil, and none of them approved.

“You are bound to do the bidding of the High Xamarai,” snarled Airo, as Hanso said, “Apprentice, you must be obedient if you wish to train. Obedience is the mark of a good soldier.”

She could try to explain that she’d never cut her hair before, that it would be akin to cutting the last tie to her old life. She could try to resist, but that would probably get her thrown out or killed . . . and it would be very silly indeed to get killed over something like hair.

“You’ve been given an order,” said the ansai. “Is this task beyond your abilities?”

“No, but Ansai—”

“Don’t argue,” Airo growled, advancing on her. Again the ansai put out an arm, stopping the insufferable man in his tracks.

“She has asserted that she’s able to do it,” he said, staring into her eyes as if searching for weakness. “Let her.”

She refused to give him the satisfaction of finding what he sought. “May I have a blade?”

The ansai drew a dagger from the depths of his robes and offered it to her hilt-first. She grasped the handle with fingers that, for some reason, were trembling. Long moments passed, but she made no move to cut her hair. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she do it?

“What will it be?” he said softly. “Your hair, or your apprenticeship?”

Her past, or her future?

In one swift motion, she grabbed her left ponytail and dragged the blade through her hair above the knotted ribbon that kept it in place. Instantly her head felt unbalanced. The severed tail pooled in a snowy heap on the floor as she replicated the procedure on the other side of her head.

“There,” she said. “Happy?” The sorry remnants of her white mane fluttered limply around her face. She returned the dagger to the ansai and he tucked it away.

“Now you can begin your work with the Xamarai.” He waved his hand, and Rana emerged from the shadows holding a pail of putrid-smelling solution and a mop. “Start by cleaning the corridors in the main hall of the Orai. That’s the building we just left.”

“I—but . . . what?” Keriya spluttered as Rana foisted the bucket and mop on her. “I’m here to learn to use my sword—”

“Chores instill discipline,” said the ansai, “and discipline makes a warrior.”

“Every apprentice is assigned chores,” Hanso added. “We cycle through the student body, making sure everyone pulls their weight and does their share.”

With that, the three men exited onto the training grounds. Keriya noted that Airo’s face was a bit too gleeful for this last statement to be the complete truth.

“You better get going, dear,” Rana advised. “Them floors won’t wash themselves, you know.”