Chapter 11 #2
“Nothing,” said Kindness Marta at the front of the class, “that we do to you here is as bad as the things that the world does to girls your age every day for no reason other than the gratification of those who hold power over them. We”—she looked around the class, her stare fixing every acolyte until they had met her gaze—“take no pleasure in this work.
We value the fast, the strong, the clever, all of those things, but what we are truly hunting amid all of the trials to which you are subjected is endurance.
We are looking for those who can bend and yet not break.
Those who can bear the worst of what the world already has waiting for them.
What we teach is how to pay the world back for those cruelties.
“We are the furnace, you the iron that will become steel and take the required edge.”
The Kindness moved from instructing to questioning, and it turned out that she didn’t need to hammer at them long to find a weak point.
“Your ignorance is an insult to this academy and an offence in the eyes of heaven.” Kindness Marta focused her stare on Mollandra, who, Bek had to admit, still seemed to know astonishingly little about the world she lived in.
Mollandra returned the Kindness’s glare with a narrow look that indicated that her ignorance extended to not knowing how afraid she ought to be at this point.
“Let us hope that you are quicker-witted than the evidence suggests.” Kindness Marta, in fairness, did not look intimidating.
Her fellow Kindnesses, Undu and Terra, were both immediately terrifying in very different ways.
Which to Bek’s mind meant that Marta might be the most dangerous of the three.
The Kindness aimed her next question at Einsa. “Where does magic come from?”
“From the gods.” Einsa’s frown said she knew more than that. Perhaps her mother had taught it to her after receiving her own education at the Academy.
“And which god does Kindness Undu pray to for necromancy?”
Einsa’s frown deepened. The Kindnesses gave themselves over to the Kindly Ones, the Furies.
And those three fearsome sisters were known for vengeance, for enforcing oaths, and for punishing the guilty.
Animating the dead was not a power Bek had ever heard attributed to any of them.
Einsa attempted an answer. Marta punished ignorance but tolerated or even encouraged free thought.
“Necromancy is different. It’s about will. The belief that you can. You need an aptitude too—just like some of us are strong or fast. Some of us”—and here she glanced in Bek’s direction—“are good with the dead.”
“Einsa here is both right and wrong.” Marta’s eyes searched the room.
“Necromancy is not different, and it is about belief and will. All magic is founded on these things. Religion is a lens that focuses belief, allowing miracles. Magic is both personal and collectively owned. It resides in the will of the one and in the dreams of the many. Though it can become bound into the physical world, into a sword, into the waters of a river, the flesh of a god, you would do well to remember that the source is always the same.” She tapped her finger to her forehead.
“And the gods?” Mollandra asked. She had been the first girl in the entire year to ask a question in Creed. Asking questions was both encouraged and dangerous.
Kindness Marta eyed the girl, still the smallest in the year.
“Will and belief bind themselves around ideas. Belief is the blood of the gods. This is why the king allows so many faiths to prosper on the streets of Tandra-ah and all across his realm. Almost every other monarch does. Allow any one faith to gain dominance and the power that will concentrate in the hands of its priests will not just be political. On the Road of Crowns that leads to King Orrin’s gates there are temples to Zeus, to Shiva, and to Ghannum, there are churches of the Cross, Gardens of Enlightenment, Zoran chapels, cathedrals dedicated to the God of Swords, shrines to the Lady of Light and to Hel herself.
Many and divided, none of them a threat to the power of a throne. ”
“What about our ladies?” Bek forced herself to speak. She had death inside her. Why should she fear where Mollandra had been so bold? “Who would pray for punishment?”
Marta favoured her with a grim smile. “Nobody prays for punishment, but everyone except those who are broken knows that they deserve it. Our sins cry out for justice. That is the belief that powers this place. Our crimes will seek us out however deep we hide. The guilty create the very magic that hunts them down.” The Kindness turned her smile on the class and suddenly, despite having few crimes weighing on her soul, Bek was afraid.
“And we, ladies, are the agents of that vengeance, the keepers of the oldest law.
We ensure that even in the chaos of this world, there are lines that may not be crossed without reckoning.
“Where the Kindly Ones punish the gods, we punish those who are mortal. We survive because the powerful fear us. And they fear us because this”—she gestured at the walls, at the Academy all around them—“this is how we are made.”
From Creed they trekked through the long Academy corridors, threading by older classes, who they outnumbered, and passing the dining hall, where the first years, still numerous and wide-eyed with shock, took many of their lessons.
Technically there was a danger in passing the first year, since any of the girls could stab them without consequence—at least if they’d had Einsa’s foresight and brought a knife with them.
Bek had read the list of what she must bring with her to the Academy as a list of what she could bring with her.
Einsa, with her mother being a Kindness, knew better.
In practice the first years were too busy surviving to make more trouble for themselves. And the shared horror of life in the second year, while it hadn’t bound the acolytes together, had established an unspoken level of mutual respect that had thus far kept the murder rate to two in six months.
After what felt like a mile of corridors they arrived at the only lesson where Bek stood out among the others. Everyone called it “knife” since that was the only weapon they’d handled so far.
Even in the Academy it would be considered wasteful to simply hand over blades and let the acolytes fight it out.
The weapons were variously blunted or guarded, making it impossible to cut or stab too deeply, even with the sharpest of them.
Of course, almost any cut can be fatal if it’s delivered to the neck, and no stab to the eye can be considered shallow.
Bek’s success stemmed primarily from the fact that she knew any prolonged fight would have her wheezing and gasping. The opponent would wear her down and the contest would end with Bek as the one being stitched up, the wound being one more burden to carry on her next run.
Since Bek’s need to end any contest swiftly coincided with Kindness Terra’s instructions—namely to overcome fear and move in fast—she came out as the winner more often than not.
Knife fights were between two, or sometimes several, acolytes with the rest of the class watching.
The experience, even secondhand, was too valuable to be wasted.
When the timetable allowed, other classes would be brought in to observe.
Bek had recently seen the twelve acolytes of Year Eight do battle in the Wound Garden—as the circular training hall was melodramatically titled.
The girls had moved with such practised grace, such speed and intensity, that they had seemed to be a different kind of creature entirely.
Bek was convinced that she would never have such skill, nor could she imagine any other of her classmates in such a performance.
Kindness Terra led the way out onto the stone-flagged floor of the Wound Garden.
Bek couldn’t guess the woman’s age. She was tall, gaunt, seamed about with many scars.
The light from high windows in the dome’s roof painted the Kindness in sharp angles, and as she walked she reached out her arms, a long knife gripped in each, points aimed at the ground.
“This isn’t good,” Einsa muttered.
“Nothing here ever is,” Bek growled.
“It’s a death bout.” Tmanga rarely volunteered an opinion. Not out of shyness, Bek felt, but from a depth of confidence that didn’t require she be heard.
“Oh!” Sharp pushed back her red curls and secured them with a tie, looking suddenly animated. “That third year, Kessa, she told me we’d have these. Naked blades. No jackets.” She thumped her own padded chest and shook her arms as if eager to be free of the long, thick sleeves.
Kindness Terra turned to face the group trailing her and tossed the two knives to the ground, the clatter and clang shocking the class to silence. In the shadows around the chamber’s raised perimeter, scores of other acolytes had gathered, older girls expecting a show.
“I will select the combatants from among the volunteers.” Terra’s near-white eyes scanned the class. “Or from the cowards if there are no volunteers. The victor will be allowed to ask a favour—this will not include leaving the Academy.” A hand went up. “Acolyte Wenda?”
“How will the victor be decided?”
If Bek had asked, a good portion of the class would have smirked at her foolishness.
Wenda, being the best knife among them, and having never once smiled in the more than a year they had kept her company, was not to be laughed at.
She had never made any threat of retribution—rather her whole person embodied the essence of such a threat.
“The victor will be the one who isn’t dead.” Kindness Terra indicated the blades on the ground between them. “Volunteers come forward.”
Wenda, who despite her grim demeanour had never shown any hostility to her fellow acolytes beyond repeatedly winning every knife fight, stepped forward.