At sunset on my sixth day, I began to count. I ignored the women’s conversation. Our talk was so pointless, so lacking in substance, no one noticed who participated and who did not. We sewed ten thousand stitches more-three hours and a quarter, more or less.
By the time we ate our soup, and the dormitory had been quiet long enough that I felt relatively safe, it had been an hour and a half more. I hurried through the dark colonnade into the Lords’ Court and took up my watch from behind a column. By my reckoning, it was first hour when the guards changed. I waited, stitching in my head until my fingers ached with the intensity of it.
Two hours until the guards changed again, and just under a quarter of an hour for them to walk the periphery of the court. Two hours later, the same. By the third guard change, the edge of the world was a deep vermilion, and I hurried back to the dormitory where the women were stirring.
All day I fought to stay awake. Zoe yelled at me several times, accusing me of slacking. My hands kept falling still, though my bleary eyes were open and my mind was counting stitches.
“I’m sorry, Zoe. Didn’t sleep well. I’ll try harder,” I said.
“If you can’t stay awake, then maybe you’d best do something else. Her Worship Kargetha wants these leggings delivered to the guardroom at the Gray House. You’ll have to do it.”
My spirit quickened with excitement, but I dared not allow it to show. “I’ll try not to be so slow ever again, Zoe. Don’t make me.”
Though one would expect that they would delight in a break of the monotony, my coworkers very much disliked being sent on errands. I didn’t know whether they were afraid of doing something wrong and being punished, or if thinking had just become too difficult.
“You’ll go.”
“If you say so, Zoe.”
“And you’re to speak to the chamberlain. Some draperies have rotted from the sun and must be replaced. He’ll give them to you to bring back here.”
“Yes, Zoe.”
I couldn’t believe my good luck. Though I would do almost anything to set down my needle, I had not dared volunteer for such duty, grumbling like the others when given a mission upstairs to the threadmaker’s or next door to the tannery. I had not yet come up with a scheme to get into the Gray House. Now the opportunity had fallen in my lap.
Zoe told me how to get to the servants’ door at the Gray House and where to find the guardroom-just to the right of the front gate, where I had seen the lights so late. As I walked slowly through the archway to the Lords’ Court with my bundle of leggings, I noted carefully the exact position of the Zhid at the corner watchpost. He looked right through me.
The Gray House was larger inside than one might expect. From the back passage where Zoe had directed me to go, I glimpsed immense, sparsely furnished rooms. All rooms in the house opened onto small courtyards by way of arched doorways, but each courtyard was as dry and barren as the rest of the Zhev’Na. A sterile house.
A dark-eyed slave girl, no more than a bony child, was carrying a basket of linens down the stairs. When I asked her which way to the lower guardroom, she cringed, shook her head, and hurried away. I came upon another slave polishing the tile floor with a rag and asked him the same. The man pointed down a side passage, then angled his hand to the left and held up two fingers. Being a slave, the man was not allowed to speak. Being a Drudge and therefore nothing, I could not give him permission, even by asking a question.
“The second turning to the left?” I asked.
He nodded wearily, then went back to his work. Dreadful scars covered his shoulders. I had never been close enough to a slave to see the collar. The strip of black metal, etched with letters and symbols in brighter metal, extended all the way from collarbone to jaw. I remembered the screams I had heard the night of my arrival, and I swallowed hard.
I delivered the leggings to the guardroom, noting that two guards were awake and two sleeping on pallets in the next room. Keeping my eyes down as I had been taught, I asked the guards where I might find the chamberlain. The Zhid directed me up the stairs.
Halfway up the tight staircase, I heard shouting and the unmistakable clash of weapons from outside, beyond a sheltered balcony that opened off the stair landing. Seeing no one to observe me, I stepped onto the balcony, staying to one side where I would be shielded from view by a column that supported the roof.
In the center of a dusty courtyard, two boys were engaged in a fierce fight, circling, weaving, swords flashing in the sunlight. One boy wore boots and padded leather armor, while the other-taller by a head-was barefoot and wearing only a slave tunic and collar. I caught my breath. The boy in leather was Gerick, his face fierce and shining with sweat as he beat off a quick blow and swiveled to attack. The speed and accuracy of his movements had no relation to the awkward ten-year-old I’d watched at Comigor.
The slave parried, and the two boys circled again. The slave was proud and unafraid, and though his left arm dangled useless and bleeding at his side, he advanced on Gerick with cool and deadly precision. What could a slave hope to accomplish by attacking the favored guest of the Lords?
I backed toward the stair ready to run for help, but a glint of sunlight on steel at the edge of the yard stopped me. A Zhid warrior stood watching from the shadowed corner. Gerick moved to attack again. The Zhid shouted something, and the slave shifted his defensive stance before Gerick struck. Earth and sky! This was practice.
Gerick missed an easy opening, and the Zhid stepped out and stopped the match, castigating Gerick thoroughly. While the warrior made Gerick repeat the required move ten times over, the slave boy walked over to a water barrel by the wall and scooped out a drink, holding his wounded arm tightly. The swordmaster completed his instruction, then stepped back and raised his hand. The boys took their positions, and when the Zhid lowered his hand, they went at it again.
As I watched them close and strike out at each other again, I decided I’d been wrong to judge this combat mere practice. In truth, it was war, both boys the casualties. When the opening came again, Gerick did not miss. His sword caught the slave youth just below the ribs, and a red stain blossomed on the youth’s gray tunic. Gerick stepped back, sword raised. The slave was bent over, his sword arm clasped over his middle.
Yield, I begged silently. Someone end this.
The youth, not more than fifteen or sixteen, straightened, and lifted his sword. He was pale. The two engaged once more, and after only a few moments, Gerick knocked his opponent’s sword away. The slave sank to his knees on the red dirt. Gerick touched the point of his sword to the boy’s neck, then sheathed his weapon and turned his back. He walked over to the water barrel, scooped a dipper of water, and drank deep. The swordmaster talked to Gerick for a while, demonstrating another movement and making him practice it ten or fifteen times. Then the two of them moved off toward a shadowed doorway. The gasping slave knelt in the broiling sun, trying to keep his life from leaking away into the red dirt.