Shard, page 9
part #2 of Cruelly Made Series
Nobody there is your friend. Nobody wants you to do better. They think they do, they’ll tell you they do, but they don’t. Because if you escape, it makes them feel like shit for not escaping. So if you dream big, you are an idiot, or you think you are too good for the muck.
Nobody in the muck is your ally. Not a single one of them. You have to accept you will be alone, friendless, and surrounded by enemies.
You keep your dreams and your plans to yourself, or they’ll be taken from you like everything else.
The Academy had not been much different. A street-bred Fell with Blight infused into them in the company of high-bred brats and their equally high-bred teachers was never going to do well. You were not going to make friends. You were not going to gain allies. You wouldn’t even be able to muster a modicum of respect.
So Pebbles’ die before your soul dies attitude is adorable. Silly Aether. She has no idea that the Blight reducing him to nothing didn’t matter, nor did it matter to any Fell, because they had been born as less than nothing. They are all blemishes, problems, burdens. A mewling piece of crotch fruit that their mothers hadn’t wanted. A by-product. Children conceived with happiness, want, good intentions? They don’t become Fells.
True Fell Mages, like Aethers, are the products of very specific circumstances.
There is no way Pebbles will comprehend that. She wants to serve and fight against the Blight. She believes all that garbage, and to be fair, she’s not wrong. Without Aethers, there won’t be a tomorrow worth having. He is made from Blight… he knows the Blight can’t be allowed to win.
But Pebbles cannot possibly comprehend that Fells don’t serve out of a sense of duty to a country that has never given them a damn thing.
But Pebbles knows she doesn’t understand. And that is… peculiar.
Blood dismisses the memory of her blood softening while they spoke, the way her Aether feels like cool water on a hot day, or soft sunlight in spring, a moment of pure peace. She is beautiful and elegant and graceful even in filthy rags, and exquisitely broken and delicate, yet sharp like a jagged broken vase.
It’s a distraction he cannot afford. In five, ten years, when they’re out from under this and he needs a wife, he’ll let himself be distracted. Now all that matters is she be able to fake being a Shard enough to convince the military.
And she may have just done them all a huge favor: now the military will report that the Fells are willing to defend her, they all work together. Shard bread crumbs strewn.
Smoke is looking at him.
Blood mentally curses. Smoke is hard to read—it’s just his nature as a Fell, obfuscation—but he’s learned how to hear the whispers over the years if he wants to. Smoke, unfortunately, is a perceptive ass as well.
Blood sits down next to him.
Smoke eyes him, the corners of his mouth moving just enough to be somewhere between a dry smile and unspoken words.
“Of course I’m thinking about her,” Blood mutters under his breath, staring at the back of Atrament’s head. The Fell’s long, dark hair has been gathered in a thick rope that he’s pulled across his shoulder. The Fell is listening to them for certain. “She’s insane.”
“You defended her,” Smoke murmurs.
“Of course I defended her, since she’s too stupid to keep herself out of trouble.” Blood shifts his attention to the Warden, who is done soothing the rattled nobles and discussing something with the Researcher.
“I regret nothing,” Pebbles says irately from where she sits next to Rot.
Truth is: he’s not mad about it. The beggar had left a sick feeling in his stomach. Nobody could have watched the dog. Two of the junior officers are watching them talk. Pebbles is stiff and ticked off. Good. The military will see them coming together as a team, while the Warden will hopefully not think they were becoming a cohesive unit.
The Warden says pleasantly, “While that was a delay, we won’t end this outing early for lack of a little lapdog. And I’m certain your sister will be happy to see you bring the little beast back. I’m sure you can spin that to your advantage somehow.”
The man picks up the dog by the scruff, raises it to his face, and sighs. “I’m sure. Would have been interesting to see what you’d turn into.”
Pebbles curses him.
Naughty, naughty. She has a foul mouth for such a pretty Aether.
She also has a talented mouth.
He shoves the blood away from his crotch.
The Warden gestures to some of his Aether-lackies. “I think our prisoner-observers are done here for now. We can continue without them.”
“I want to know why we were here at all,” Pebbles murmurs as they’re herded back out of the arena.
Blood nods.
“I will return shortly,” the Warden says pleasantly, his upper body movement not quite a bow, and not quite stiff either. Blood’s eyes narrow: the Warden is high-born. That kind of subtlety isn’t something learned, it’s acquired from youth. He’s spent years trying to learn to mimic it.
The Warden strides after them, his expression dark. He growls, “Go.”
“Yes, sir,” Rot says with zero respect in his voice.
Blood ignores the Warden’s anger. They all do, which makes the Warden even more furious, his strange blood burning under his skin. They’re herded down to the first gate. It’s yanked open, and they’re shoved through, with Inferno and Frost and the Warden coming with them.
Blood tenses.
“Go,” the Warden growls, his voice echoing on the stones.
“I don’t like this,” Rot mutters.
“Settle,” Pebbles says like they’re a bunch of nervous horses, her voice strongly soothing and impossible to ignore. “Settle.”
The three of them are thrown into their cell, and the door is locked and snaps shut.
Pebbles is on the other side.
Rot lunges for the bars. “What are you doing!”
“Bind her,” the Warden orders.
Pebbles tenses, but offers no resistance as manacles are clamped over her ankles and wrists. Mages move around her like bees, binding her in those horrible shackles, and reed whips are produced to drive her like a stupid ox.
“What are you doing, Warden?” Blood growls while Rot shakes the bars. Pebbles stands calmly and doesn’t offer a sound as a stinging smack is delivered to the back of her knees. She buckles, but regains her feet.
“Your precious Crystal Mage needs a lesson in obedience,” the Warden says coldly.
“That precious Crystal Mage is our Shard, and you don’t get to torture her,” Blood retorts. “The military—”
“Won’t know,” the Warden grins, “or do you think I am not the ruler of this place? This is my domain, Fell. That and everything inside it, and I answer to no one.”
Pebbles shuffles away in her chains, head down, while her shining skin is lashed without pity.
11
Crystal
I’m taken through the prison again, except this time we go down, and through two heavy gates with Aether bindings so potent I can feel them through all my restraints. I sense, somehow, we’re deep underground, in a very different part of the prison complex, and it is utterly silent. Not even water dripping.
And it smells. The stench is overwhelmingly bad. Like a Blightling puked all over the inside of an overused latrine, then died in it, in the middle of a swamp, in high summer. And maybe even that would smell better.
To make it worse, the air is thin, so I automatically start breathing a bit faster.
This is not the most fun I’ve ever had.
“Stop,” Frost barks.
I stop.
Chains are unwound from somewhere. They’re hooked to my ankles and my wrists, then pulled tight, yanking me spread-eagle. The band around my eyes is removed.
I’m in a narrow stone corridor with exactly six solid, heavy metal doors. The short corridor ends at a stone wall. The only thing in the corridor aside from the stone doors are two sets of four chains bolted into the heavy rock wall between the doors. I’m bolted to the first section like a cross-tied horse.
The Warden steps behind me. “This is solitary. For prisoners who require education.”
I shift my shoulders. “I never did graduate.”
“I didn’t bring you up there to interfere.” His voice is soft, deadly.
“Then why did you bring us up there?” I ask. “What are you doing with the crystal I conjured? Why didn’t you tell the military about it?”
He opens one of the heavy doors with a flick of his hand. It swings open with a metallic groan.
Frost and Inferno cut my clothing off. The rags fall to the ground and I’m exposed. With my legs spread, the fetid air brushes my privates, and I suppress a flinch. The Warden extends a hand. Frost passes him her reed whip. The whip is already stained pink from blood.
The Warden taps it gently against my cheek, trails it between my breasts, shoves the point into my navel, then taps it right between my slit. He rubs it back and forth lightly. The rough reeds hurt, and it is exactly zero percent enjoyable.
I refuse to look away from his strange eyes.
He taps my pussy gently, then his wrist jerks, and two stinging swats are delivered to the inside of my thighs. I flinch. The chains jerk. My thumbs and toes threaten to dislocate.
“We would continue to play with the whip,” he snaps it back to his thigh, “but that’s so very crude, and a Mage like yourself has been conditioned to pain. Such unrefined tactics won’t work on you.”
“You could try it,” I say.
“I won’t waste my time. You’re too conditioned to pain.” He extends the whip again and gently brushes the old scar on my left arm, caressing it, then brushes the whip along my cheek and chin, like the caress of his fingers. “Part of you will say I deserve this, and you will submit to it like a penitent. The other part of you will say you do not deserve it, and I am a monster, and you have been bred and reared and trained to fight monsters.”
“I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” I reply, leaning into the whip. “I didn’t know you cared.”
Frost and Inferno unharness my chains, drag me into the cell, spin me around, and unbuckle my restraints. Frost grabs me from behind and whispers in my ear, “Be a good girl.”
She shoves me so hard I stumble into the opposite wall.
The door slams shut. A key slides into a heavy lock, and an Aether curtain clamps down through the door like jaws snapping shut.
I take in my new surroundings, or I would, except it’s completely dark. But my other senses tell me something about it: it stinks. It’s stifling hot. There is no air flow.
I carefully summon a shred of my magic. It surges upwards into my hands like an eager horse, and I wrestle with it, and light explodes out of my fingertips. I wince and shield my face from my glowing hand, and wrestle the magic into a burning Aether ball.
“Needs color.” My new accommodation is a stone box with a ceiling a head height taller than I am, a stone floor, and not wide enough to spread my arms out, or long enough for me to lay down. There is a hole in the floor in one corner that supplies air and the horrible stench.
And nothing else. Not even some straw. Bare stone floor, walls, ceiling. The door on this side is perfectly smooth except for a single narrow slot that is bolted and locked shut. It’s fitted so perfectly to the stone frame that even light doesn’t slip around the edges. It’s thick with Aether. There’s some kind of warding in the middle between the steel plates.
Who was this prison built to hold? Besides the rumored Old One in the bottom. But call me crazy: I don’t think a single door like this is going to stop a determined Old One.
The walls are stained with blood. Layers of blood.
I cautiously sit down in the corner opposite the poop-hole. There’s no where to sit that isn’t going to put at least one part of my raw skin against filth, so no point in being precious about it. My Aether should protect me from casual festering.
The Aether-light drifts up and bounces along the ceiling.
I rest my head against the gross wall and my wrists on my knees, and block out the stinging pain from the weal marks. The stench is so overpowering it numbs my sinuses. The more disturbing thing is the thin air.
I watch my Aether-ball drift around until it comes to rest in a single corner, and I focus on keeping my breathing slow and steady, and my mind still. Solitary is meant to break a prisoner, and it could break them. It does.
If the nobility used the Pit for some weird entertainment or wagering, I’d have heard about it, or at least rumors. The nobles that had been at the demonstration were from prestigious families. Their secrets tended to leak, especially when they were gone from the Capital for any length of time without explanation. Young nobles being spotted in this particular section of the Empire? It’d be gossip. And nobles were genuinely frightened of Blight. They didn’t want to be exposed to it.
And they definitely did not want to ride across increasingly remote and shitty sections of the Empire without a good reason. Those nobles were not the sort that could bear to sleep outside without a perfumed pillow.
And the military being there? Of course, they’d provided the Aether Mages, but the Pit has its own Aether Mages.
Why summon that Crystal team from the front?
Strange. All very strange. And the Warden hadn’t revealed the stable crystal we’d cleaned out of the arena.
No matter how I turn it around in my mind, I can’t put the Warden’s game together. But the lack of air isn’t helping.
My Aether-ball dims. I close my eyes and put myself into a deep meditation where time means nothing.
Time may mean nothing to the mind with enough training, but your body isn’t ageless.
Total, hot, foul-smelling darkness briefly suffocates me until I remember where I am.
I tentatively create another Aether-ball and set it drifting around the ceiling.
Still in the same stone box.
My stomach rumbles.
Is food part of the solitary experience? Or do I get to be alone with my organs?
How about water? Is water part of the experience? Or will my tongue get to be triple size so I can have three-way delusional conversations with myself as my brain shrinks in my cranium?
“Great,” I whisper to myself. “It’s going to be great being a delusional Aether Mage. I’m not even competent when I’m coherent.”
12
Crystal
A towel is wrapped around my brain.
Light illuminates the edges of the door to my box, and then there’s a loud grating noise that makes me wince as the door’s locks throw, and it grinds open against the stone floor.
Light floods in. I wince again and shield my eyes with an upraised forearm.
“Crystal,” the Warden says as he steps inside the box. It’s barely big enough for two of us in here. He smells like hay and candle wax. He deposits a bucket of water between us. “It sounds so strange to hear that name for you. You really don’t deserve it, do you? More a statement of fact than a name spoken with any reverence.”
My body jerks, but I manage to catch myself before I reach for the water. I’m thirsty, starving, hot, sweaty, filthy, and a little out of my mind, but I’m not dumb. Not yet, at least.
“What should I call you?” he asks. “Do you have a preference?”
Why did he care? I tremble from resisting the water bucket.
“Your parents gave you a name, did they not? Perhaps we should end this charade and use that one.”
If he really wants to know my original name, he can ask his buddies. It was my name for thirteen years. But I am not giving it to him.
“Drink,” the Warden says mildly. “It’s not poison.”
He doesn’t want me dead. He just wants me to think he’ll kill me. We both know it won’t happen. He needs me for something. Ambition, perhaps?
But the Blight would have consumed him a long time ago if all he wants is power and wealth.
My joints protest and my scabbed, raw skin cries out as I force myself to unfold from my corner. I have to shift onto my knees in front of the bucket. He smiles as I bend over the water.
We can also put that under things I don’t care about. If he thinks I’m willing to play along, it’s better for me.
I manage to take just a sip of the water to make sure it’s not a trick, like it’s Hammer’s piss bucket or from the toilet-trough. No: it’s water. It smells slightly of hay and horses. It must have come from the stable.
I slurp it down, then sink back on my heels as my stomach rebels. I focus on not puking. Need to get as much as I can before he takes it away.
My head lolls back on my shoulders as I look up at him. I’m on my knees. Is he thinking about what else I’m eye-level with? He’s wearing nothing remarkable, just the same uniform all his guards wear, except around his hips is the low-slung belt. This time there are many keys attached to the loops. The loops are all metal inlaid with something that looks like Aether, and a few keys look like they’ve been carved out of crystal and bound with Aether thread.
I’ve seen plenty of Aether-inlaid keys. I’ve seen keys made of diamond and sapphire and other hard gemstones and even common, clear quartz, then wrapped with Aether. His crystal keys are something else, and they’re very, very old.
“You haven’t killed your Fells yet.” He crouches down on the opposite side of the bucket. If I was going to lunge at him, I’d knock it over.
I lean forward over the bucket and look into the hallway. No Aether guards. At least not looming.
“We’re alone,” he says. “I know you won’t kill me. Aethers, however, are a different matter.”
As if that’d loosen my tongue. I bend my head to lap up a few more mouthfuls to wet my mouth. “So I don’t have to be careful what I say.”
“You can speak freely.”
So he doesn’t want his Aether guards to know about him wanting me to kill the Fells. Whatever the Warden is up to, he knows the military won’t like it, and the guards aren’t loyal to him.
