The child had found a rat. They weren’t uncommon around here, and in the slave pens, they ate them. She was a bit too young for the Dedication ceremony, wherein an eight-year old child must catch a creature with blood, such as a rat, themselves and present it to a cleric for the ritual. This one, she had caught for entertainment.
If she had just killed the creature, it would not have distressed Nier so.
“We must do something,” Nier pleaded.
You, he means you. You have to do something. Aestith said, “What?” They were both males, and she was a girl, even if by her hair and her clothes, she was a servant, or the daughter of one anyway.
The young girl laughed. It was an awful, squeaking sound as if to mimic the tormented rat.
The rat screamed. Nier’s eyes squeezed shut. “It’s the sound,” he whispered.
“Then walk quickly,” Aestith advised.
The animal shrieked. Nier jumped as if struck.
It irritated him. Not just the girl, but Nier’s attitude about it.
The door opened. His stomach tightened. A tired-looking woman stepped outside. She looked from her daughter to the cage and back, mouthed “not again” and swept over to her. She wrenched the cage from the girl’s tiny hands. The girl opened her mouth to scream but the mother’s other hand clamped over it. The woman threw the cage into the street. The rat jerked and twitched, then shot from the open cage. She lifted her daughter like a burdensome doll.
The girl pointed at Aestith. “But, Mother—”
“No,” the woman snapped.
“But—”
“What have I told you?”
The door slammed closed.
Aestith filed the incident away; it might be useful to know later. When Little Miss Torturer got a bit older, she might be a problem, depending on her skill at manipulation. Fit-throwing and tantrums, as it stood, was a good sign—for him if not for her, anyway. It meant she hadn’t learned to manipulate others to her way of thinking. Sometimes doing nothing at all was the best course of action.
The pair hurried away from the house. Nier muttered something about taking an alternate route for at least a while.
Aestith pursed his lips, then looked down one way, then the other. He pulled Nier aside. You can’t hide effectively in the dark, not from drow, but you can obscure yourself behind bends in narrow caverns and statues.
The alley was a natural break between buildings that slowly formed a natural cave. In a few years, both would be too tall to fit through the child-sized hole at the end of the shallow cave, but for now, they could squeeze through the cranny by breathing shallowly. Nier had a harder time of it than Aestith, who personally did not think he would ever exceed five feet in height, but that was only average height for a male drow.
Every house in Enainsi had some form of running water, every public square a pool or fountain. Waterfalls, both natural and manipulated, were incorporated into the architecture. Two main rivers were even used as transportation around the city and another for waste, and where they met the lava flow, they steamed. Fireweed thrived in the blistering heat, making the air around them fractionally but noticeably cooler. The end result was that Enainsi was humid. The waterclock was a centerpiece in the city, almost symbolic. Without the water, it would be so hot that they would die of the heat during the heat waves. There was a rumor that they were about to reach another period of heat waves, from the lava flows. If that happened, the church would declare a public holiday. Aestith had used to like them, but had been grateful in recent years that there hadn’t been one.
The festival had not been declared yet, however. Right now, it was only hot enough to be unpleasant, particularly under all the clothing Aestith wore.
“Do we really have time for this?” Nier complained. He squeezed air out of his lungs to fit between the closest part. “We have class.”
Aestith stepped into the opening. “We’ve been doing all that shit since we could walk. It’s all the same, and it’s boring.”
Nier snorted, sliding into the open space. “Aestith, this is why you’ll never rank anywhere near even the top half in class.”
The other raised an eyebrow. “Being unremarkable means no one remembers you.”
They climbed over the long chasm as it vented hot air from the bowels of the earth, and down another passage, the only other one. Water rushed past. They leaped carelessly from one large water-smooth rock to the next. One slip would mean falling into the rapids below. During some cycles, the water was too fast and deep to risk the crossing. Presently, it was low and quick, but not deadly. They skipped across with long practice and the knowledge that the faster you went, the easier each jump was.
Aestith hopped out of the way for the taller boy and they raced down the wider passage. Nier was faster, but Aestith cut in front of him, tripped him. His laughter echoed down the short passage and carried over the water. Aestith was pulling off his boots by the time Nier reached the sandy bank. The other boy scowled at him.
Nier undressed to his smallclothes. Aestith kept his trousers on.
“You better hope that dries,” Nier called as he tested the temperature of the water with his toes.
Aestith made a face. “It will. It’s hot.”
Nier rolled his eyes, then glanced back at Aestith’s bare chest. Aestith crossed his arms defensively. Aestith genuinely hoped they would stop growing soon. Nier said, “What’s so special in your pants you need to hide it?”
Aestith huffed and sat back down in the sand.
Nier snorted. “Don’t pout.” He frowned, then turned. He took a running start, jumped, tackled Aestith into the sand. They wrestled, fought, elbowed one another. It was play, but it wasn’t. It never was with drow. Any game was wrapped in a lesson, a test, a struggle.
Nier pinned Aestith down to the sand. Aestith kicked. Nier grinned down at him. Aestith stared at him, terribly aware of how close they were. Nier scooped up a struggling, kicking Aestith. Aestith threw sand at his face. Nier recoiled, then blindly tossed Aestith into the water. A yelp escaped Aestith’s throat before he fell into the water. He wanted a shock of cold, but the water, this close to the volcano, was warm. He swam upwards. Nier splashed beside him. A waterfall trickled on the far wall, and it drained somewhere far below where he floated. He surfaced, scowling at Nier.
Nier smirked. “I threw you in first, and you know, the water is awfully warm.”
Aestith dunked him and shoved the other down. He kicked away, but Nier grabbed his ankle and used the leverage to propel himself upwards. Aestith swam to the surface, gasping, and Nier dunked him back down. Aestith swam away from him, floated until he could breathe, then kicked water at Nier.
The other laughed. “Sore loser.”
“Fuck you.” Aestith swam to the opposite shore, a rocky outcropping barely big enough to turn around. He tottered, positioned, then dove down, down. He liked the feeling of weightlessness water brought him. He liked the feeling of being encased in something. If he dove down deep enough, he could almost see the bottom, and the water grew colder. He used to wonder if there was something down there, but they had never seen even a hint of it.
He swam upwards, surfacing just in time for Nier to dunk him again. They fought and grappled in the water, splashing, then were silent, listening to the sounds of the cave for anything they might have disturbed. Neither heard anything, so they swam laps, raced, took turns to see who could dive farther. Aestith’s trousers weighed him down too much. He couldn’t swim as fast, or dive as deeply. Nier said, “You hiding something there too?”
Aestith stared, stricken, and tried to conceal it by swimming under, but Nier caught him and pulled him back up.
Nier’s brow drew into an angry glare. “Are you?”
Aestith pushed back from Nier and swam toward the shore. “We need to go to class.”
Nier swam after him, faster, and climbed out. He stood in front of Aestith, knocking him back into the water. Aestith splashed, wheeled, floated. Nier’s fingers balled into fists. “What else are you hiding, Aestith?”
Aestith sunk lower in the water, thought about submerging.
Nier was red, in infrared, with fury. He stared at Aestith like a wild animal that could charge. “I thought it was just that.” He gestured. “But if it’s not—” His lips curled in blatant disgust. “—then it’s not.” Nier did not turn his back to Aestith; that displayed trust, and he stayed to one side, grabbing his clothes. He put them on wet and sandy, then stomped from the pool.
Aestith dove down, screaming into the water where the sound was muffled to bubbles. He emerged gasping, and dove again. He wondered what drowning would be like. Peaceful, he imagined.
Aestith was late to lessons, which resulted in disciplinary action. He sat on the earthen ground as he honed and polished each blade. There were dozens. He listened to the voices just beyond the cavern, bouncing from wall to wall to echo in his ears. It gave him a dull kind of comfort, to be able to so easily guess how far away they were. They drifted closer and paused. He caught snatches of conversation, but he wasn’t particularly interested in it; they were discussing his age group’s progress. The instructor was boasting about the best warrior in the class, Pemmiraj’Kaix.
The class was composed of noble but considerably less wealthy houses, or semi-wealthy commoners. For one reason or another, they couldn’t afford a private tutor, or didn’t have a private weapon master, or lacked siblings able to teach—or, like Aestith, had siblings who could have taught him but couldn’t be bothered to waste such time on a male. They wasted money instead, treating him like any other investment, one that they expected to be repaid with interest. Aestith didn’t know Kaix's story.
Kaix was an asshole; Kaix's older brother Sailanshin, however, was perfect. From snippets of comments from Haeltania, he had also been quite gifted and blessed with a face that inspired either lust or envy. She had had him once or twice, though no child was begat, which he suspected had more to do with the funny-smelling tea she drank for a bell or two afterwards than happenstance.
Sailanshin’s beauty and proficiency could be the entire cause of Kaix's behavior. Aestith imagined it had to be hard to live your life in another’s shadow. He couldn’t hide in his sister’s shadows even if he had wanted to; there was nothing for him to follow or live up to. Kaix had expectations dumped on him because of his elder brother.
Aestith wondered what having a brother was like. Would he have been less lonely? Or more worried? Would it mean competition, or something else? Then, What else was there? Followed by, Competition for what, exactly? That would imply that Aestith had anything.
Virabel was attempting to conceive a second time; there was a great deal of pressure on drow to reproduce. Considering said pressure, Aestith had to, at least in the sanctity of his own mind, question the wisdom of the third son sacrifice, for the sake of each female having a male to herself if nothing else.
Like spiders, the female drow were larger in stature than the males, more powerful. They needed more women. Feeding, clothing, and teaching a boy took away from the mother when she could be trying to birth another girl. Still, she took cycles out of her life to make that boy. Yet they could still serve Lolth after the sacrifice, in their way. And it took that pressure off of the mother. It was expensive for a household to raise a child; it should be a child that was worthy of that expense. And, when he considered it, it wasn’t really his decision; it wasn’t his body going through those torments to begin with. All the women really needed was a handful of men, when he thought about it. That, of course, was hampered by monogamy that was the norm. Most drow didn’t trust others enough to climb into bed with them indiscriminately—Almalza Tith'Rix had been a rare exception, and even she had used to have guards posted at her orgies.
He should consider himself fortunate that they did not cull the majority of them, and only the excess.
#
The bag changed hands.
He said, “Refrain from killing him.”
“Refrain?”
He hesitated. “Teach him a lesson. But don’t kill him.” A pause. “I’d prefer he suffer.”
The other’s lips pressed together into a thin line, trying to read motives on his face. Then the other shrugged. “Then we’ll make the effort.”
It was better if it happened sooner, rather than later. You can’t hide forever.
#
Aestith was late the next bell too which meant he was late to visit the warehouses, because he had to find a different route, one that didn’t go by Rat Killer and also didn’t coincide with Nier. Nier seemed disinclined to mention it to anyone, at least as of right now. And maybe Nier deserved to not get involved. Didn’t he deserve to not have to stick his neck out if he didn’t want to? And how could Aestith ask him to?
Jaele had painstakingly scouted their route and spent the past bell or so making subtle inquiries. Aestith’s own snooping mostly involved being nearby. People tended to talk over slaves and children as if they weren’t there; Aestith was slender and short though like most fourteen year olds would insist he wasn’t a child—and, loosely speaking, more or less a slave.
The caravan workers were lightly armed, but they had hired on extra guards. Virabel was going herself this time to escort it to the nearby fortress, likely in a fit of frustration. She probably hated it—it made Aestith smirk just to think about how angry she must be to finally flip the table over and go herself, as it were. How humiliating. Yes, someone was definitely plotting against her. But who?
Descaronan strode around the corner, and the teenager scurried away to hide. He slid in the thin margins between two stacks of shipment. The ironwood boxes stank of damp, but the substances inside would be well-wrapped. He found a hollow and nestled down in it. He leaned against a box, listening to the snatches of conversation as the workers passed.
Most of the talk was idle, an occasional complaint or workplace gossip. Some laughter. The slaves were quieter. Footsteps. Moving merchandise. Two sets of feet stopped, one with a click that meant heels.
They spoke in low, hushed tones in a tongue he didn’t know. He crept between the crates. He knelt to look through a crack in the merchandise. He could only really see someone’s back. The woman spoke. Her voice was low and husky, deeper than Descaronan’s. Descaronan wouldn’t wear heels either.
The man took a half-step back. They were signing—he could only see one hand from this angle and the conversation made no sense from his perspective. What was so secret they had to not only use a foreign language, but were signing as well?
She handed him a slip of vellum. His hand fell to one side, where Aestith couldn’t see it. Aestith turned and twisted, but no amount of turning his head would make the gap any larger. He pressed a hand against the crate, trying to leverage himself. It creaked.
He froze.
“Did you hear something?” the man said. Footsteps.
“Hear what?” the woman said, vaguely irritated.
“I thought—Nevermind. There are rats all over this place.”
The pair settled. They had moved further away. She turned. He could only see her stacked heels, a bit of her ankle. Both were unremarkable.
Aestith waited several minutes, then made his way out of the hollow in the crates. He looked around before slipping from cover, then peeked around the corner. The man had his back to him, counting boxes, testing lids with a pry bar.
Aestith had only pickpocketed before when he knew where something was, knew what he was looking for. The purse was too obvious. Somewhere else?
The man reached for a hammer on his toolbelt. His long tunic moved aside, flipping his jerkin inside out. A pocket, a roll of vellum just peeking out of it. Shit, how am I ever going to get that?
He studied the man instead, and relayed it to Jaele when she returned home.
“And you failed to retrieve the note?” The slam of her palm on the table punctuated the sentence. The kitchen was one of the best places for these sorts of talks; his other sisters would never come down here.
He sighed but the sound was masked by the heavy clang of the iron pot as he moved it back to its spit. Drow considered such bestial noises and accompanying types of facial expressions the height of rudeness, especially a male to female. “How might I have stolen it? Maybe you can pickpocket that well, but I can’t.” His mouth twisted into a frown. “Did you find anything?”
She shrugged and squatted in front of the cold fireplace. She picked up the poker and sketched a crude map in the ash. She said nothing until he had studied it, then she smeared it with the flat of the poker. She set it aside and rose. “Best place for an ambush is on the northeastern side.”
He leaned against a counter. “We let it happen?”
She nodded vaguely. “More or less.” Her eyes flicked away. “And you will tail the raiders. They mustn’t see you—either the caravaners or the raiders, especially not during the raid.”
It was dangerous. But he was disposable. More than disposable. He was some kind of malformed freak. “Certainly.” He paused. “We could always botch it.”
“Oh?”
He made a face and shrugged one shoulder dismissively. “Sneak into a couple warehouses, change the shipping destination or dates. We could get a second caravan, either ahead of us or behind us.” He crossed his arms. “Could break a wheel and we’d be behind a bell. Even repainting the wagons could cock it up.”
She tapped a finger on her lower lip. “Hold onto that thought.”
She wasn’t going to. Either because he had thought of it, or she actually did want to see Virabel fail. There were more ways than murder to move up in rank, and more ways than death for another family to ruin his.
Was it Jaele? And she was sending him running around like this to throw him off, in case he was reporting to another sister? Or did she think he was working for another family now?
In the complicated landscape of politics, your allies are temporary.
He told himself that on the walks to class, and the walks back. He told himself that during classes, when he wore more padding than the other boys, not out of cowardice, but fear of them seeing. They removed their shirts, and he sweat. They dried, and he marinated. Did anyone suspect? How could they not—he was clearly hiding something, but he supposed it could just as easily be bad skin; his face was spotty enough. He didn’t have to imagine what they said of him; their sneers and the wrinkling of their noses was enough.
He told himself that it was temporary. He’d pass into physical adulthood, and then someone would kill him. Or, if he managed to evade that, he and Nier would likely go on to different divisions of further study. It didn’t help the present, though.
Nier did not look at him, or speak to him. But then, Nier did not treat Aestith much differently than he treated anyone else. Maybe Nier had learned the same lesson.
The practice ring was a favorite place of many of the boys; it was the place where the politics stopped mattering, where they could be themselves—granted, only with a weapon in hand. But it didn’t matter where you stood in your family or where your family stood in society; for a little while, there was nothing else. Nobles were taught that their bloodline would not protect them from a commoner’s swords. Commoners, like Aestith, were taught that even they could best a noble.
It was just you and the weapon and another weapon coming at you, a target to hit that moved and hit back. You sweat and your heart pounded. You felt alive. You were where you needed to be, where you were meant to be. You were aware of yourself. You were a jewel being cut and polished to a shine. One bell, you’d be inlaid in something beautiful, and you’d know you belonged there. Sometimes, you could even see it.
Except then it was over, and he was no gemstone in a jeweler’s hand, but just a lump of rock. A bruised lump of rock with an aching chest. He walked home covered in sweat.
He longed for a proper bath—hot water in the communal bath where he could stretch out. Steam rising so thick he could barely see out of it, soaked up to his neck in it. He could dunk his head and hold his breath until it hurt. When he cut himself, he could let the blood drip into the water and taint it pink, the hot water lapping at the shallow cuts and drawing out more of its warmth. And then, oh, a candlemark-long full-body massage with fragrant oils. But he hadn’t risked being naked for that long in a long time.
It wouldn’t be safe.
Awkward teenage sensibilities compelled him to avoid the paths Nier took walking home—and fear kept him from the street that little girl was on, lest she learn to recognize him. She wouldn’t stay a child for long. It meant it took him a bit longer getting home, but he didn’t mind that so much. He listened, and watched. Sometimes, he even saw things that were interesting. Once, he and Nier had found an affair going on between two merchant houses, and they had more than a few suspicions that a classmate was the spawn of two siblings.
He rounded a corner and stopped. A gaggle of his classmates stood at a crossway where the path opened to another cavern. Aestith moved to cross the street, but one of them stepped in front of him. His eyes flicked towards the others. They were watching.
He stared straight ahead, then sidestepped, as if he didn’t recognize the power play. The other moved with him. He exhaled slowly, then stepped forward, rotating his shoulder with the motion. He brought his elbow into the other boy’s gut and moved his boot to collide with the other’s ankle. The boy tripped. Aestith ran. They followed.
He raced down the unfamiliar corridor, all attempts at feigned ignorance abandoned. It narrowed and curved. He followed it upwards. His feet twisted on steps cut unevenly—made to slow potential invaders. He felt an invader in this section, wrong and foreign, an outcast and a social pariah—if only they knew. He felt like a spy or an imposter in his own home, in the only place he’d ever known.
If he could only get home, they wouldn’t dare. But he was so far away.
Boots struck on the stone behind him. They seemed to dance or float over the steps where he struggled as if he were trying to climb a rockslide. Fingers whisked against his back, seeking purchase on the folds of cloth. A sudden flat surface where he was expecting another stair pitched him forward and the hand gripped empty air. He bolted down the cavern, inlaid with trihex bricks. His heart raced.
A hand gripped his forearm. He wrenched his arm free. It cost him seconds. Another hand grabbed him. He threw himself against it. Fingers caught in his clothes. Hands, shoving, pulling. Someone struck him. His legs went slack, then he wrenched suddenly. He caught a boy in the groin with his boot and punched the other. He broke free. He raced down an alley, a twist of close buildings, and exploded on another stair.
He nearly collided with Nier. They were right behind him, shouting. Nier’s jet complexion paled to iron oxide. His eyes widened. Aestith froze, the world going dim around the edges, sound fading.
A hand grabbed him. He pulled against it and reached for Nier.
“Nier,” he choked. “Don’t let them—”
Nier stepped away.
They drug Aestith back.
There were hands—No, fists mostly. Boots. He bit someone, and they hit his jaw. Someone held his arms back. He kicked the boy in front of him. The boy holding his arms wrenched them until he cried out. Aestith stomped on the boy’s toes. Hands gripped his shirt. The stitching strained and thread snapped. His eyes widened. Everything inside him screamed not to beg, that it would only make it worse. Think!
“I’m a Tith'Rix. Do you think you’ll get away with this?” he spat.
A hand covered his mouth. He tried to bite it, but the hand smothered him. He fought to breathe. Fabric tore. He wasn’t sure if he were more afraid of them seeing him naked, or what would be a savage beating. Worse, he feared them leaving him alive and exposed, stranded so far from home. If you’re going to do this, please kill me afterwards.
He struggled, kicking, twisting. The buckle on his belt unthreaded. They either planned to beat him with his own belt, or they did actually plan to strip him.
He tossed his head back. The back of his head slammed into someone’s nose. The boy holding him relaxed his grip. A hand fell away. Aestith threw himself to one side, throwing his shoulder against another boy. The pair fell. Aestith tried to get up, but there were too many hands, then a boot connected with his back. He gagged as the wind was expelled from his lungs. They pinned him down. He squirmed. A foot kicked the side of his head, jarring his teeth. He tasted blood. His eyes watered, but his throat was too dry with terror to scream.
Someone shouted, a woman. The boys fled. Aestith coughed and spit blood onto the street.
The woman stared down at him. “Can you walk, boy?”
His entire body ached. Blood ran from his nose and mingled with the blood on his lip. Pain lanced up his arm. He couldn’t answer, because he didn’t know. As if scaling a canyon, he climbed to one knee in a formal pose of submission. He felt like he might fall over. Blood dripped onto the ground. It bloomed over his lips and tasted of copper in his mouth.
“Get up.”
He staggered, then clawed his way to his feet, leaning heavily against the side of the wall. His trousers sagged and he flushed with embarrassment. He hurriedly adjusted his clothing, studying the brickwork. He swiped at the blood on his lips.
She stared at him as if she were trying to bore a hole into his skull. She put her perfumed hands to either side of his head. Magic flowed through her hands. He balked at the robe denoting her as a cleric. “What was that on about?”
Nier. “Th-Thank you, my lady. It’s nothing. A petty squabble. I—”
She slapped him, relatively lightly after everything. She could have hit him harder, if she had wanted to. “You’re lying.”
Was it true—could they read minds? He cringed. “I—I am ignorant of their reasons for attacking me.”
“Fair.” The magic itched downwards. The loose tooth corrected itself. A broken bone in his finger rotated with a painful grinding sound, then snapped back into place. He flinched. She grabbed his short hair, and pushed his head from side to side, looking for any further marks under the blood. Head wounds could bleed proliferously, but it didn’t always necessitate severe injury. He stared past her, never directly at her. Her hair coiled on top of her head like a crown of amber snakes. Terror climbed in his throat, or perhaps had never left. She let go of his hair. “You’re a Tith'Rix. The only boy? Stain on the bloodline?”
His eyes flicked back downwards. No one ever recognized him, least of all by bloodlines unless he had already put the idea in their head.
“Yes, I thought so,” she mused. “I recognize those cheekbones. You resemble your mother.” She smirked at the subtle implication that his mother could birth a mere male that looked enough like her to be recognizable—an insult to his house, and a compliment to him at the same time.
Her hands fell away in a wave of foreign fragrance. She stepped back, pointed chin held high. Her sarii should have been a mere fine black silk with silver trim and purple stitching, but she had outfitted it with gilding and rings, layers of silk and brocade. Paint and powder to accentuate her features and draw attention to her. The cut of her clothes and makeup drew the eye to white and gold spider and skull markings on her skin that denoted Lolth’s divine favor. She wasn’t just a cleric—she was a priestess. “You are indebted to me, Tith'Rix boy.”
He bowed his head, his heart pounding furiously in his ears. “What would you ask of me, priestess?”
She studied him. “A favor. When Priestess Ondalia calls for you, you’ll answer.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Won’t you?”
“Anything you ask of me, priestess.” But she could have that anyway. She was a cleric, a priestess. There were none higher than she outside her temples. It wasn’t about her rank, then. This was about her.
She turned on the ornamented steel heel of her boot and walked away, perhaps to find her true purpose here. Her guards, a contingent of bugbear slaves, flanked her. He watched her go, some longing stirring in him, but he didn’t know if it was a longing for her, or that he wanted to be her.
Whatever had made Ondalia happen by, the goddess would not have sent her for him.